Not So Free Love.(Hair: American Tribal Love-Rock Musical and Reasons to Be Pretty)(Theater review)

Will someone who's associated with "Hair" (in revival at the Al Hirschfeld, under the direction of Diane Paulus) do the production a favor and turn the shit down? Let's start with the sound design. As conceived by Acme Sound Partners, the show's big crossover hits--"Aquarius," "I Got Life," "Good Morning Starshine," and so on--still sound like themselves, melodically speaking, but the lyrics, not to mention the actors' intonations as they sing sweetly of new beginnings, eternal hope, and the earth's bounty, are overwhelmed by an ear-piercing treble, which not only raises the majority of the vocals to a pitch that bats might recognize but lifts the brass section of the onstage band into a series of sensation-numbing crescendos.

Next, the hair. While Gerard Kelly's wig design--and especially Darius Nichols's oversized Afro--is a hair fetishist's dream, it has the unfortunate quality of meshing too seamlessly with Michael McDonald's psychedelic costume design. Together, these sartorial elements, instead of helping the performers transform themselves into credible proponents of free love, simply blast the audience with the stereotypical visual signifiers of the nineteen-sixties hippie era. (It's worth noting, too, that there is a curious lack of grunge onstage; although the majority of the characters in "Hair" supposedly spend most of their time rolling around in a New York City park, they look as though dirty fingernails ick them out.)

I didn't expect to take such a dyspeptic view of the show, and I was saddened by my response. After all, I enjoyed Paulus's version of the musical when I saw it last summer in Central Park, where the sound of city traffic, helicopters, and trees rustling in the breeze made "Hair" feel more like "the American tribal love-rock musical" it's meant to be. The Park scruffed it up. Although the actors performing then (many of whom appear in the current production) were also too clean to be real hippies, they were at least surrounded by the dirt and detritus of Central Park, which seemed a perfect antidote to their collective optimism; filth was just one more thing for them to ignore as they set about assiduously loving one another. Still, much as I enjoyed last summer's jamboree (I was particularly taken with Allison Case as Crissy, and John Moauro as a Tribe member--both were clearly at the beginning of successful careers), I was a little restrained in my praise even then. And my reservations had nothing to do with Paulus's work or that of her fine choreographer, Karole Armitage. Rather, I was disturbed by certain elements in Gerome Ragni and James Rado's book and lyrics.

"Hair" was first produced in 1967, at the Public Theatre. (It went to Broadway the following year; the current production mirrors that trajectory.) At the time it premiered on Broadway, a mixed cast was still relatively uncommon. But that suited "Hair" just fine. Less a musical than a revue, it was meant to showcase those elements of society which the American stage had relegated to the margins: blacks and women. And yet there is not one believable black character in "Hair." In fact, its strangled, hackneyed depiction of black masculinity is painful to watch. Compare how we meet the free-spirited white hippie Berger (the excellent and appropriately narcissistic Will Swenson) and the militant black man Hud (Nichols). Berger introduces himself and his tentacle-like sexuality--he wants to touch everyone he sees--by joking around and flirting with the audience. Hud, on the other hand, comes across immediately as one angry dude--and angry about just the things that white people might imagine he'd be angry about. Glaring at the audience, as he paces the stage, he sings:

I'm a colored spade, a nigra, a black nigger, A jungle bunny jigaboo coon pickaninny, mau mau, Uncle Tom Aunt Jemima Little Black, Sambo, Cotton pickin' swamp Guinea junk man, shoe shine boy. . . ., And President of , The United States of Love I said, President of , The United States of Love