Great Moments in New York Theater HAIR
This is a story I started a few weeks ago and never finished… I will finish it today without going back to change facts or tenses. When you read the first sentence, you will understand…
It was announced this week that the much lauded production of HAIR that is currently on Broadway will close. That is, indeed, a shame; and yet… I have made my peace with it for a couple of reasons. I actually think it is wrong for a show to have extremely long Broadway runs. Free up the theaters for new shows and new experiences, for one thing. The other? It has been proven, all too often, that productions get tired after awhile and lose their luster. We who live in New York and frequent the theater have seen it time and time again – like a sitcom that has lasted two seasons too long, shows run until audiences are seeing a less than fresh, less than stellar production. I think every audience who goes to see HAIR deserves the exact same experience I had when I saw it.
Perfection.
I had seen productions of HAIR in the past and when this one opened I wasn’t thrilled to see it. It wasn’t at the top of my list. For one thing, my friend Jonathan had played Claude in Central Park but was not coming to Broadway with the show. An actor who I felt was too old for the part had replaced him. Secondly, I hadn’t really, I mean REALLY, liked the productions I had, previously, seen. I supported those productions because they featured friends of mine and because I think Hair is an important work that deserves to be acknowledged. The first production I saw had SO many of my friends in it that I ended up seeing it a few times and, even, doing production shots of it. I loved it for them and for the innate emotion of the play; but the truth is that I found it to be completely over directed and somewhat pretentious. That feeling carried over into almost every other production (live or on bootleg dvd, which everyone knows I collect) I saw. I always felt like directors and actors, alike, completely overthought the show and tried to get so deep, so conceptual, so intent on presenting a message that they ignored the basic point of Hair. Hair, at the time of its’ creation, was a happening. It wasn’t musical theater, although it was a musical and a piece of theater, it was just what it appeared to be. Even though there were honest to goodness actors performing in the show, they weren’t all actors; and, as people, most of them were of a hippie-esque nature in their lives and actors in their work; so even though stagecraft was involved, they were really just living in the moment eight shows a week and using their stagecraft to share the moment with their audiences.
Now, it is difficult to do that with a cast now because times, mindsets and controlled substance use has changed, greatly, not to mention the nature of sexuality. One cannot approach a production of Hair the way the original was. It is, now, a museum piece and must be directed, as such. HOWEVER. There are new issues and new mindsets that were born from the era in which Hair was created. There is still a war on overseas, there are still causes for which we crusade, there are still controlled substances, widely used, and there is still promiscutity… no, I don’t like the word promiscuity… I’m going back to the 70s and saying Free Love. It’s not the same, no, but these factors in our lives can be used as a frame of reference for the actors working in a production of Hair. I think it is essential that the actors feel a serious sense of kinship with the characters they play. I believe they should have marched in at least one march, done one controlled substance, had one threesome and lost one loved one to death before embarking on a production of Hair.
When I saw the original cast of the recent revival of Hair, I felt that all the actors had had these life experiences. That gave them permission to relax onstage and let the text do the lions’ share of the work, causing a perfect collaboration of writing talent, directing talent and performing talent. The performers had the perfect opportunity to just live onstage, live in the moment and live in the characters.
Which is precisely what they did.
The first time I saw Hair was just before Christmas. One of my best friends said to me “Let’s go get tickets to Hair!” on a Sunday morning. At TKTS we were unhappy with the ticket price of 80 plus dollars for unacceptable seats; so we went to the box office, where they wanted 100 plus dollars for seats downstairs in the center orchestra. It was just a few dollars more and it was Christmas and it had snowed… we may as well treat ourselves! The box office man did say, though, “they are going to draw the lottery in twenty minutes” so we decided to try it. We won! We both won tickets to the matinee and the lottery tickets were up in the box seats. PERF! We called my husband and told him we were going to see HAIR from the box seats on a snowy Christmas season day!!!! PERF. Only one thing would make it more perf; and when we sat down in our seats at the Hirschfeld, we were all three under the influence of an unnamed controlled substance. WHAT. FUN.
When you sat in the box seats (as well as many other places in that theater) you were fodder for the frolic of the actors, all of whom came out into the house and played with the audience. Natch, in our box, the person they went to was the dude without hair. I LOVED it! I got touched, I got to touch, I got to get up and dance with a spotlight on me.. it was a gas. That part of the show was certainly special for us all, as was the high amount of chair dancing we did. It was like being at a rock concert with a theater filled with people who understood the meaning of the words PEACE and LOVE. I felt the love from the cast and the fellow audience members – it was something I will remember, always.
Aside from the levity of the experience, there was the little matter of the show being extraordinary. What a generously talented group of artists, from the actors to the musicians to the directors. I felt that I had finally SEEN the play Hair. They GOT it. Then they gave it to all of us. We laughed and wept and sighed and chair danced for two plus hours and when it was all over, we were pulled down onto the stage to dance with the cast and the other audience members, singing at the top of our lungs that famous anthem, Let the Sunshine In.
Magic.
The same best friend and I went back for another viewing of Hair in March, just before the original cast went off to London. We knew we needed to see that cast again, one more time, so we planned a mid-week trip to the lottery, which we won, on a snowy day. We had the same seats as before (though not the same cast – at both performances, there was an understudy or two on but it made no matter – everyone was stunning in both performances) and, once more, we ended up on the stage dancing with the cast.
And what a cast it was. The actress playing Sheila gave me what I always wanted from the role and was always missing; the actress playing Chrissy gave me, for the first time ever, a live performance of Frank Mills that allowed me to hear the original notes; the two different actors I saw play Woof held me captive, entirely, (I think Woof may be my favourite character in the show and I was especially drawn to the original Woof in this production – he totally embodied the feel of the show for me). I loved all of the tribe but found, particularly, interesting to watch the girl named Megan and the boy named Paris, who seem to have an ability to open themselves up, completely, for the audience to come in. And the lead, Claude Hooper Bukowski, was mesmerizing. The first night we saw the show we saw an understudy named Jay Armstrong Johnson who had the youth needed for the character, not to mention a star quality in his performance that one doesn’t find in a young person every day. The second time I saw Hair, I saw Gavin Creel, the man I said at the start of this story I felt was too old for the part; I still think he is too old for the part but I don’t care. What presence! What talent! The man is special, so special; so it’s totally cool by me that he is not the teenager that Claude should be – just one of those things you learn to overlook, with extreme pleasure.
I’m so happy that my bestie said we needed to go see Hair, that Christmas Sunday. After the productions of the show I had seen, previously, I never thought I would want to see another Hair. Now, having seen a real production of Hair, I don’t need to see another, ever. I am, for all time, satisfied.
It was announced this week that the much lauded production of HAIR that is currently on Broadway will close. That is, indeed, a shame; and yet… I have made my peace with it for a couple of reasons. I actually think it is wrong for a show to have extremely long Broadway runs. Free up the theaters for new shows and new experiences, for one thing. The other? It has been proven, all too often, that productions get tired after awhile and lose their luster. We who live in New York and frequent the theater have seen it time and time again – like a sitcom that has lasted two seasons too long, shows run until audiences are seeing a less than fresh, less than stellar production. I think every audience who goes to see HAIR deserves the exact same experience I had when I saw it.
Perfection.
I had seen productions of HAIR in the past and when this one opened I wasn’t thrilled to see it. It wasn’t at the top of my list. For one thing, my friend Jonathan had played Claude in Central Park but was not coming to Broadway with the show. An actor who I felt was too old for the part had replaced him. Secondly, I hadn’t really, I mean REALLY, liked the productions I had, previously, seen. I supported those productions because they featured friends of mine and because I think Hair is an important work that deserves to be acknowledged. The first production I saw had SO many of my friends in it that I ended up seeing it a few times and, even, doing production shots of it. I loved it for them and for the innate emotion of the play; but the truth is that I found it to be completely over directed and somewhat pretentious. That feeling carried over into almost every other production (live or on bootleg dvd, which everyone knows I collect) I saw. I always felt like directors and actors, alike, completely overthought the show and tried to get so deep, so conceptual, so intent on presenting a message that they ignored the basic point of Hair. Hair, at the time of its’ creation, was a happening. It wasn’t musical theater, although it was a musical and a piece of theater, it was just what it appeared to be. Even though there were honest to goodness actors performing in the show, they weren’t all actors; and, as people, most of them were of a hippie-esque nature in their lives and actors in their work; so even though stagecraft was involved, they were really just living in the moment eight shows a week and using their stagecraft to share the moment with their audiences.
Now, it is difficult to do that with a cast now because times, mindsets and controlled substance use has changed, greatly, not to mention the nature of sexuality. One cannot approach a production of Hair the way the original was. It is, now, a museum piece and must be directed, as such. HOWEVER. There are new issues and new mindsets that were born from the era in which Hair was created. There is still a war on overseas, there are still causes for which we crusade, there are still controlled substances, widely used, and there is still promiscutity… no, I don’t like the word promiscuity… I’m going back to the 70s and saying Free Love. It’s not the same, no, but these factors in our lives can be used as a frame of reference for the actors working in a production of Hair. I think it is essential that the actors feel a serious sense of kinship with the characters they play. I believe they should have marched in at least one march, done one controlled substance, had one threesome and lost one loved one to death before embarking on a production of Hair.
When I saw the original cast of the recent revival of Hair, I felt that all the actors had had these life experiences. That gave them permission to relax onstage and let the text do the lions’ share of the work, causing a perfect collaboration of writing talent, directing talent and performing talent. The performers had the perfect opportunity to just live onstage, live in the moment and live in the characters.
Which is precisely what they did.
The first time I saw Hair was just before Christmas. One of my best friends said to me “Let’s go get tickets to Hair!” on a Sunday morning. At TKTS we were unhappy with the ticket price of 80 plus dollars for unacceptable seats; so we went to the box office, where they wanted 100 plus dollars for seats downstairs in the center orchestra. It was just a few dollars more and it was Christmas and it had snowed… we may as well treat ourselves! The box office man did say, though, “they are going to draw the lottery in twenty minutes” so we decided to try it. We won! We both won tickets to the matinee and the lottery tickets were up in the box seats. PERF! We called my husband and told him we were going to see HAIR from the box seats on a snowy Christmas season day!!!! PERF. Only one thing would make it more perf; and when we sat down in our seats at the Hirschfeld, we were all three under the influence of an unnamed controlled substance. WHAT. FUN.
When you sat in the box seats (as well as many other places in that theater) you were fodder for the frolic of the actors, all of whom came out into the house and played with the audience. Natch, in our box, the person they went to was the dude without hair. I LOVED it! I got touched, I got to touch, I got to get up and dance with a spotlight on me.. it was a gas. That part of the show was certainly special for us all, as was the high amount of chair dancing we did. It was like being at a rock concert with a theater filled with people who understood the meaning of the words PEACE and LOVE. I felt the love from the cast and the fellow audience members – it was something I will remember, always.
Aside from the levity of the experience, there was the little matter of the show being extraordinary. What a generously talented group of artists, from the actors to the musicians to the directors. I felt that I had finally SEEN the play Hair. They GOT it. Then they gave it to all of us. We laughed and wept and sighed and chair danced for two plus hours and when it was all over, we were pulled down onto the stage to dance with the cast and the other audience members, singing at the top of our lungs that famous anthem, Let the Sunshine In.
Magic.
The same best friend and I went back for another viewing of Hair in March, just before the original cast went off to London. We knew we needed to see that cast again, one more time, so we planned a mid-week trip to the lottery, which we won, on a snowy day. We had the same seats as before (though not the same cast – at both performances, there was an understudy or two on but it made no matter – everyone was stunning in both performances) and, once more, we ended up on the stage dancing with the cast.
And what a cast it was. The actress playing Sheila gave me what I always wanted from the role and was always missing; the actress playing Chrissy gave me, for the first time ever, a live performance of Frank Mills that allowed me to hear the original notes; the two different actors I saw play Woof held me captive, entirely, (I think Woof may be my favourite character in the show and I was especially drawn to the original Woof in this production – he totally embodied the feel of the show for me). I loved all of the tribe but found, particularly, interesting to watch the girl named Megan and the boy named Paris, who seem to have an ability to open themselves up, completely, for the audience to come in. And the lead, Claude Hooper Bukowski, was mesmerizing. The first night we saw the show we saw an understudy named Jay Armstrong Johnson who had the youth needed for the character, not to mention a star quality in his performance that one doesn’t find in a young person every day. The second time I saw Hair, I saw Gavin Creel, the man I said at the start of this story I felt was too old for the part; I still think he is too old for the part but I don’t care. What presence! What talent! The man is special, so special; so it’s totally cool by me that he is not the teenager that Claude should be – just one of those things you learn to overlook, with extreme pleasure.
I’m so happy that my bestie said we needed to go see Hair, that Christmas Sunday. After the productions of the show I had seen, previously, I never thought I would want to see another Hair. Now, having seen a real production of Hair, I don’t need to see another, ever. I am, for all time, satisfied.
posted by StephenMosher at 9:44 AM
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