|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hair, subtitled The American Tribal Love/Rock Musical, is a musical about hippies and was a significant part of the drug, music and peace-love culture of the 1960s. It is famous, among other things, for a scene where the majority of the cast appear naked, and especially for its popular rock music score, which spawned several pop radio hits.
HistoryHair was written by James Rado and Gerome Ragni (book and lyrics), and Galt MacDermot (music). It premiered off-Broadway, with much fanfare, as the inaugural performance of the Public Theater, on 17 October 1967. It then ran for 45 performances at The Cheetah, an old discotheque at 45th Street and Broadway, before moving to the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway on 29 April 1968 where it stayed for 1,873 performances. The West Coast version played at the Aquarius Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Hair opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London on 27 September 1968, continuing for 1,998 performances until closure was forced by the roof collapsing in July 1973. Hair also went on to stage productions across the world and continues to be performed today. Hair came tenth in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the "Nation's Number One Essential Musicals" (wherein "Nation" refers to the United Kingdom). [1] FilmA movie version of Hair was directed by Miloš Forman and released in 1979 with a cast including Treat Williams, Beverly D'Angelo, and John Savage. Revivals
A hit production opened in Australia in 1992 with a new sound for the old songs. [clarify][citation needed] A revival opened at the Old Vic in London in 1993, starring John Barrowman and Paul Hipp, and featuring a revised libretto, but it was a failure. One production member was quoted as saying: "The cast was a group of Thatcher's children who didn't understand it."[citation needed] In 1995, another revised script was published. [clarify][citation needed] The next large revival was in 2001, in Vienna. It was radically updated and subsequently successful. [clarify][citation needed] James Rado approved an updating of the musical's script to place it in the context of the 2003 Gulf War instead of the Vietnam War. The new show opened at the Gate Theatre, London in September 2005. [2] Amateur and college productions have continued worldwide ever since the original production. One particular show of note was the Spring 2006 production out of California State University, Northridge. Performing the original script, the Waabi Kiizis tribe (Native American for "see the sun") was able to connect Hair to modern political and social issues. The show was viewed and praised by Michael Butler (the show's original producer) as the "best production this century". [clarify][citation needed] Political and cultural significanceThe show challenged many of the norms held by Western society at the time. It caused controversy when it was first staged, and much publicity was provoked by the Act I finale which included male and female nudity. This became a legal issue when the show left New York on tour. Stage nudity was acceptable in New York at that time but was unknown elsewhere in the U.S. The show was also charged with the desecration of the American flag and the use of obscene language. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case (Southeastern Promotions, LTD v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546) established that the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee's refusal to allow the play to be shown at the city-owned Memorial Auditorium was an unlawful prior restraint. The show also effectively marked the end of stage censorship in the United Kingdom. Hair makes many references to Shakespeare plays, especially Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet (for example, the lyrics to the song "What a Piece of Work Is Man" is from Hamlet (II: scene 2); and in "Flesh Failures/Let The Sun Shine In", the lyrics "Eyes, look your last!/ Arms, take your last embrace! And lips, O you/ The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss" are from Romeo and Juliet (V:iii,111-114)). This may be a result of the playwrights' involvement with the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater.[dubious — see talk page] Many of these references did not appear in the Broadway version of the play, but were part of other productions, especially London. PlotSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The musical follows "The Tribe", a group of politically active friends, long-haired "Hippies of the Age of Aquarius" fighting against conscription to the Vietnam War and living a bohemian life together in an apartment in New York City. Among them are Claude, the nominal group leader; Berger an irreverent free spirit; Sheila, a New York University (NYU) film student who is in love with both of them, and who is the most focused political activist of the group; Woof a bisexual gentle soul; Jeanie, who is in love with Claude but pregnant by another man; Hud, a Black Panther; Crissy, Dionne, among others, who are struggling to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution with their pacifist rebellion against the war and the conservative impulses of their parents and society. When the men of The Tribe receive a draft notice, they conduct a burning ceremony at a Be-In and destroy their draft cards, except for Claude, whose sense of responsibility restrains him. Ultimately, he goes to fight in Vietnam, as each member of The Tribe reluctantly releases him (Sheila's "good-bye" includes the gift of sex). Symbolically, the sub-plot of Claude's repeated failure to burn his draft card can be interpreted as a hippie take on Hamlet, whose inability to take decisive action causes his demise, as in the last scene, he appears as a ghostly spirit among his friends wearing an army uniform, in an ironic echo of an earlier scene, where he says, "If I was invisible, I could do anything!" Players
SonglistsOriginal Off-Broadway Songlist
Initial Broadway Songlist
Broadway Songlist
(*) denotes songs eventually dropped from the Broadway show. London 1993 Songs
Albums
Cultural influence
See also
References
|
Sites |
Searched sites for "Hair (musical)" |
|
No sites found. |
Sorry, no matching site records were found. |
Want your site listed here?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
