I went to go see New Line’s production of HAIR last night at the Wash. U. South Campus Theatre. And it was great. Interestingly, it was mainly the Boomer-era audience members who wore the daisies the cast passed out before the show, while most of the folks of my age or younger tended to stuff them into a purse or pocket, or spent the night absent-mindedly twirling the stem between two fingers. This is what happens to you when you come of age in the era of AIDS, meth and irony versus free love, pot and earnestness. (Though the Personality Defect Quiz points out that the only the big difference between an Emo Kid and a Hippie is introversion vs. extroversion, so maybe that was the problem.)
Still, generational differences aside, I agree with Scott Miller’s hypothesis that HAIR is not just a boppy period piece, but a powerful show that is more relevant in 2008 than it’s been since it opened in 1968. The most obvious parallel, of course, is the war, but there’s also the pathetic fact that we’re still dealing with racism, a phony drug war, environmental degradation and a rather hypocritical and vicious form of Puritanism that has always seemed to thrive in the United States.
Scott understands this show like few people do (he’s even written a book about it) and has managed, through subtle tools like pacing, to make this show feel even more relevant to current audiences. “Age of Aquarius,” for instance, was slowed down and percussive; to my ear, it almost sounded more hip-hop than hippie.
The really weird thing about HAIR is that it is so organic, it still works, but in a completely different way than it did when it debuted in 1968. Some aspects of it feel trapped in amber, but this is exactly why it’s so potent now: when you see Woof rhapsodizing over a poster of Mick Jagger, you realize this was a year before Altamont. And the Manson murders. And not so many years before Kent State. This, at least to me, gives the first act the feeling of a Greek tragedy, though this was Rado and Ragni’s message: they were all about free will.
But that’s what makes the second act so supremely powerful—especially the last song, “Let the Sun Shine In.” As Scott notes in his essay on HAIR, it’s a warning and an invitation to those who have butts in the seats, right now:
“’Let the Sun Shine In’ is not the happy song most people think it is. It’s a call to action. The tribe is begging us, the audience, to change things, to stop the killing, the hatred, the discrimination, the destruction of our world. They are saying that we are in a time of darkness (as described in detail by "The Flesh Failures," "Easy to Be Hard," and other songs), that it is now time to let the sun shine in and change things. It’s significant that the lyric doesn't say that the sun is already shining and everything is going to be fine. It says we have to take action, we have to let the sun shine on the darkness around us, and the implication is unmistakable – if we don’t let the sun shine, it will be the end of us.”
Ouch. Here we are in a similar, but I would say even darker place—at least America still had Posse Comitaus and Glass-Steagall back in 1968. HAIR shows us, 40 years later, both where the hippies went wrong and where they were right on. And that to abandon the project of striving for equality and justice (even if it doesn't involve spliffs and paisley) would damn us to our own Greek tragedy. I can't tell you exactly what happened when the Osage Tribe gathered on stage to sing "Let The Sun Shine In," but it felt an awful lot like the Holy Ghost, or someone like him, was in the house.
Note that this the last weekend for this remarkable little show. And if you miss it, some part of you, perhaps one flying around in the 8th Dimension among the fractals, will be really bummed out.
—Stefene Russell
