Hair, Let the Sun Shine In

With Hair once again in the public eye,and pulling down a Tony award for best musical stage play recently,it's time once again to take another look at what originally was an off Broadway experimental play. It was the brainchild of Jerome Ragni & Jerry Rado,two actors who were mainly involved with off,off Broadway plays,were room mates at the time. They noticed the,then ever growing hippie counter culture & what they stood for,and decided to apply all they saw,and turned it into a play. That play,of course,was Hair. The play didn't actually have a standard plot,but a series of scenario's,with a connecting narrative thread to them,with a music score by Galt McDermott. The play opened off Broadway in 1967,moved to Broadway the following year,and managed to carve a name in the annals of theater that had never been experienced before. The play was bold & controversial. Four years later,the play closed on Broadway,but spread to several other countries & sparked a revolution in theater. This documentary shows just what impact it caused,thru the use of interviews with former cast members,footage of rehearsals of the recent Broadway cast,interviews with celebrities,vintage film clips representing the tempest that was the mid to late 1960's (anybody for film footage of Lyndon Johnson?), and other elements that make for a short (the documentary clocks in at under an hour),but sweet documentary that will thrill not just the baby boomer's who lived through it all,but the up and coming generation that make up the next batch of Hair cast members. As this is a documentary shot on video,rather than film stock (although uses lots of old film clips),distribution will be limited somewhat (I managed to catch it on the Sundance Channel). Not rated,but contains flashes of nudity,sexual content & some language that one may not want little Johnny to hear (i.e. it would probably snag an 'R' rating from the MPAA)

Documentary about "Hair"--the play that broke the rules of what could be shown on stage (male and female nudity) and just blew people away with its messages. I never saw the original play (I was only 7 when it came out). I did see the 1979 movie (which I loved), got the original cast album and saw it when it was revived locally back in 1981 (and was held over for months). Since the Broadway revival of "Hair" won a Tony it was time to do this. A lot of this is old news to me (I've read a few books on the subject) but some of it was fun. I got a big kick out of seeing clips of the original cast performing "Aquarius" on the Smothers Brothers show and the Tonight Show. Also some of the interview clips were interesting...but it just never came together. It seemed to switch subjects back and forth with no rhyme or reason and hammers its message home more than once. I KNOW "Hair" was anti-war--I don't need to be told that again and again. Despite my misgivings I'm glad I saw this. It is short (52 minutes) and some of it was interesting. Worth catching if you have any interest in the show.

This film never comes together. It contains some very interesting parts but they remain fragmented because the producers treat the performances -- with one exception -- in the original "Hair" stagings only as fodder for publicity, and certainly not as the beginning of careers for individual artists. The exception is Diane Keaton. The narrator reminds us that she left the role of Sheila, and became famous and successful as an actress. Although some of the interviewees in this brief film also became successful after their "Hair" performances, neither that success nor their artistic development is given any notice. A glaring omission concerns Jennifer Warnes. There are several scenes from the original "Hair" in which Jennifer's presence is central, but she is never identified and no mention is made of her subsequent commercial success as a singer and songwriter ..... in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and during this last decade, let alone any mention of her development as an artist. The new participants in a "Hair" revival were shown only briefly, and their performances seemed to be imitations of the original. The film's narration indicates that "Hair" changed theatre in America, but by its construction this film treats it only as a museum piece.