[Mb-hair] HAIR-London TIMES review

[Michael Butler]

You will recall that I was attacked by Rado due to my Blog 'Answers to
Simon' where he took umbrage to my putting down the rumored changes in the
Gate production. 
I had never heard of them and was critical of this director or any director
for deviating from the Tams approved version.
How was I to know that he and Galt had approved these changes. In fact it
turns that Rado had supposedly made many of them.
So I responded putting the record straight.
Never a reply nor acknowledgment from them.
PS: Rado also was critical of my handling the Broadway production of HAIR
and the Russian production. I did respond with my last Blog 'Questions about
HAIR'.

> 
> Yikes, sounds awful.  Claude-with-Playstation.  Hmmm.
> and Berger with what, an Ipod...?
> Maybe Sheila, instead of leading the protest march,
> sits down and cc's e-mail petitions across the globe
> in a single stroke.
> 
> I'm curious: Was these changes due to a re-write by
> the author(s) or a directorial enhanceement?
> 
> rj
> --- Michael Butler <michael at michaelbutler.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> September 23, 2005
>> 
>> Times2
>> 
>> Hair
>> Benedict Nightingale at Gate Theatre, W11
>> 
>> THIS show ‹ meaning the original Hair, not last
>> night¹s ineptly updated
>> version ‹ was a big deal when it hit London 35 years
>> ago.
>> 
>> That was partly because its portrait of stoned
>> hippies brandishing their
>> unshorn locks at American society had made it a cult
>> in New York, but mainly
>> because we had just dispatched the censor to the
>> knacker¹s and were at long
>> last free to see its famous nude scene.
>> 
>> Here, let me inject a personal memory. Halfway
>> through Galt Macdermot¹s
>> ³tribal musical² I whispered to a colleague, ³When
>> is the nude scene
>> coming?², and he replied, ³It¹s just happened². So
>> for me Hair will for ever
>> mark the time when I realised I needed specs.
>> 
>> At the tiny Gate there¹s no danger of missing what
>> is, in 2005, a pretty
>> standard display of bobbing genitalia. Indeed, one
>> would only have to reach
>> out a hand in anger to end several men¹s hopes of
>> fatherhood. What¹s odd,
>> though, is that the second such display is meant to
>> evoke the human pyramids
>> at Abu Ghraib. A musical that was once a protest
>> against Vietnam has moved
>> to the Iraq era, complete with a poorly caricatured
>> Bush and a spoof
>> sergeant who tells the anti-hero to ³get your ass
>> out there and fight those
>> sand-niggers².
>> 
>> It doesn¹t work, least of all in the handling of
>> that anti-hero, Charles
>> Aitken¹s spindly Claude. This time he isn¹t the
>> hapless victim of a policy
>> that was forcing young men into the killing fields.
>> Rather, he volunteers
>> for the army, one moment sneering over his
>> PlayStation at parents who want
>> him to get a job, the next bewildering his fellow
>> dropouts by telling them
>> that he¹s about to defend democracy.
>> 
>> I was bewildered too, despite a new ending and a
>> dream sequence in which
>> Claude twigs what he¹s doing. The hippies in general
>> have become more
>> aggressive and confident, which is fine when
>> energetic dancing or singing is
>> needed, but stops us seeing them as the baffled,
>> vulnerable youngsters they
>> were meant to be. A musical about a lost generation
>> has become one about
>> brash layabouts exercising their inalienable right
>> to smoke dope, sing songs
>> about love and refuse to grow up.
>> 
>> Starting with that hummable ode to Aquarius, some of
>> those songs still have
>> zing. But evoking a zombie Establishment by dressing
>> actors in judicial
>> robes, plus plastic headdresses that can¹t decide if
>> they¹re hair-curlers or
>> coal buckets, is just one of several errors.
>> Moreover, the hippies¹ flowing
>> locks, like their clothes, have succumbed to spare
>> modernity. This is a Hair
>> without hair, which is no Hair at all.
>> 
>> Box-office: 020-7229 0706
>> 
>>     
>> 
>> 
>>     Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
>> This service is provided on Times Newspapers'
>> standard Terms and Conditions
>> . Please read our Privacy Policy . To inquire about
>> a licence to reproduce
>> material from The Times, visit the Syndication
>> website .     
>> 
>> 
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