Books, Arts & Manners: Hair

I first saw Hair on a September evening in 1968. I had flown in from London that day and was tired and cross and generally antagonistic to the world. I had been in England all summer and word filtered about “America’s tribal love-rock musical” across the ocean and I went because I Was Curious (tired). Back in those days—1968 seems a long time ago—Hair offended some people, but for most of its audience it was a bracing experience. Even then it was beginning to be institutionalized, but—and this is the big thing about Hair—its audiences weren’t. While the cast was settling into what was very literally a groove, the audience was still getting that I’m-seeing-something-for-the-first-time feeling.

Since 1968 I have seen the show in London and in Paris—the London cast being slack and a bit on the lethargic side, disaster in a show that depends on energy above anything else, and the Paris cast full of teeny-boppers, sixteen-and seventeen-years-old and pudgy, singing away in some kind of franglais-cheveuxesque, “Bon jour, soolfur-deoxeed, Allo, carbon-monoxeed.”

RC

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Richmond Crinkley

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I first saw Hair on a September evening in 1968. I had flown in from London that day and was tired and cross and generally antagonistic to the world. I had been in England all summer and word filtered about “America’s tribal love-rock musical” across the ocean and I went because I Was Curious (tired). Back in those days—1968 seems a long time ago—Hair offended some people, but for most of its audience it was a bracing experience. Even then it was beginning to be institutionalized, but—and this is the big thing about Hair—its audiences weren’t. While the cast was settling into what was very literally a groove, the audience was still getting that I’m-seeing-something-for-the-first-time feeling.

Since 1968 I have seen the show in London and in Paris—the London cast being slack and a bit on the lethargic side, disaster in a show that depends on energy above anything else, and the Paris cast full of teeny-boppers, sixteen-and seventeen-years-old and pudgy, singing away in some kind of franglais-cheveuxesque, “Bon jour, soolfur-deoxeed, Allo, carbon-monoxeed.”