[Mb-hair] Two More Toronto Hair Reviews

[Nina Dayton]

The Toronto Globe and Mail 
 
What a bummer. It's far off, not far out

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE 
Hair
Book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni
Music by Galt MacDermot
Directed by Robert A. Prior
Starring Craig Burnatowski, Karen Burthwright, Jamie McKnight

At Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto

When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars . . .perhaps it will be time for Hair to shine onstage again. Until such a celestial meeting of peace-digging planets takes place, we're stuck with CanStage's wretched revival of the 1967 hippie musical. It opened Thursday at the Bluma Appel Theatre under the direction of Robert A. Prior -- and has a whole lot of nothing to say about the sixties or the present time.

A relentless collage of unsubtle video projection, vintage fashion show and karaoke-grade singing, this production only succeeds in pulling the dubious double feat of undermining the old musical and exposing the vacuity of its new 
interpreters. James Rado, co-writer (with the late Gerome Ragni) of Hair's book and lyrics, straddles both camps: For the last few weeks, he's been in Toronto, frantically rewriting the book for this revival.

I'm not sure what exactly he's been busy doing, since nothing here has a whiff of freshness about it. The basic plot, at any rate, remains unchanged. Hair is the story of Claude (Jamie McKnight), the long-haired rebel who has to leave the tribe of East Village hippies to fight for his country in Vietnam. His friendship with "democracy's daughter," the activist Sheila (Karen Burthwright), and with Berger (Craig Burnatowski), the de facto tribe leader, forms a secondary emotional through line in Hair. There's not much of a story, but the musical has always been more about capturing (some would say capitalizing
on) the period's vibe than telling its definitive history.

That's where this production strikes out. Prior's vision, if that's the right word, of the 1960s counterculture scene is superficial in the extreme. All that talk about parallels between Vietnam and the war in Iraq that was supposed to prove the relevance of this period piece was just that: talk.

The only evidence of a 21st-century aesthetic or thinking is the constant streaming of video-game-like imagery that only enhances the high-school feel of the night -- a night hijacked by the audio-visual club at that. From newsreel footage to psychedelic colour explosions, practically every moment in Hair is accompanied by this barrage.

Such visual vocabulary would have worked much more successfully if the rest of this over-amplified, over-designed production didn't clash horribly with it. Dany Lyne's sets and costumes recycle the sixties as an existential theme park from which there's no physical or emotional exit. I suspect Prior was aiming for a sense of visual and sensual bombardment, but his strategy loses its impact and wears out its welcome early on in Act I.

Normally critics are on autopilot in complaining when the visual overload of a show upstages the cast or unfairly competes with it. (See The Lord of the Rings for the ultimate illustration of this critical mantra.) This time, however, I'd like to part company with my own tribe to note there is a silver lining to the cloud of sensory overload: It offers a distraction from the thoroughly dull cast of largely unknown and untried musical-theatre performers. The thinking behind such risky casting in a high-profile production is admirable; the execution significantly less so.

Collectively, there's a wholesomeness -- which is not to be confused with innocence, lost or otherwise -- to the cast that denies the material its social undertones and its rebellious spirit. Everybody seems to function emotionally at the level of a cruise-ship production of Annie.

There are two exceptions: Burnatowski as Berger and Jamie McKnight as Claude. The former at least offers a magnetic stage presence; the latter gives an emotionally straightforward performance unencumbered by the sound-and-light show that surrounds him.

There's no good news to report when it comes to the singing. The real tragedy in this Hair is not Vietnam but the vocal massacre of one great song after another. From the opening chords of Aquarius to the closing anthem Let the Sunshine In, from the comic Frank Mills to the thunderous Ain't Got In, the singing lacks feeling, character and, well, singing ability.

It all rather forces one to re-think the place of Hair within American musical-theatre history, at the very least as a "now more than ever" work. Time has left this show behind.

For most of the cast in this spectacularly awful revival, the cruise ship awaits. 

Hair continues at the Bluma Appel in Toronto until June 17 (416-368-3110).

************************************
TORONTO STAR

Theatre Review: Hair needs a comb
Mar. 31, 2006. 06:50 AM
RICHARD OUZOUNIAN - THEATRE CRITIC

Hair
By Gerome Ragni and James Rado. Music by Galt MacDermot. 
Directed by Robert A. Prior. 
Until June 17 at Bluma Appel
Theatre, 27 Front St. E. 416-368-3110 

The cast all proudly display their naked bodies, but they keep their souls well-concealed. 

And that problem is symbolic of what's wrong with the monumentally unimpressive CanStage/Dancap
Private Equity production of Hair, which opened last night at the Bluma Appel Theatre. 

When this "tribal love rock musical" first opened on Broadway in 1968, it won friends (and enemies)
for its in-your-face, unapologetic portrayal of America's disaffected youth. 

It throbbed with righteous indignation and crackled with irreverent wit. The songs were tuneful, 
the lyrics irreverent and the original staging brilliant. But take away the passion that drove it 
and you really don't have much left. The book was always feeble and James Rado's soap-opera-ish 
rewrites here only drive home that fact. 

Director Robert A. Prior has removed any trace of genuine emotion in his version and replaced 
it with a world of empty posturing, campy comedy and gratuitously pretty pictures. 

This production could move intact to a cruise ship -- although they'd probably ask for better 
performers in most roles. 

Dany Lyne's costumes and scenery have gone to Peter Max for inspiration, with overly bright 
day-glo colours, cutesy set pieces and costumes that no one in the '60s would have been caught 
dead in. 

There's also a series of projections by Yo Suzuki that range from the banal (anybody got a 
lava lamp?) to the inappropriate (why do we see newsreel footage of the Dionne Quints?) 
while John Munro's lighting seems to consist of one monochromatic wash after another. 

It all starts to look like an episode of Laugh-In that happens to have a couple of Vietnam 
jokes thrown in. 

Vietnam. There's the rub. The whole show is about Claude, who's just gotten his draft notice 
from the U.S. army, and how he deals with the pressure of deciding whether to be swept into the
carnage taking place in Southeast Asia. 

Most of the second act is a drug-fuelled hallucination invoking America's history of racial 
oppression and imperialism. The original production by Tom O'Horgan staged it superbly,
culminating in a strobe-lit phantasm where rebellious black slaves morph into the North Vietnamese 
army. 

All that Prior can offer us here are a series of lightweight comedy tableaux. If you think of 
what Twyla Tharp did with similar thematic material in Movin' Out, this production ought to hang 
its head in shame. 

Stephen Hues has provided choreography of the sort that empowers the audience: the steps are so 
simple anyone could do them, and so predictable they can probably guess what's coming next. 

What always made past productions of Hair fly was the talent of the cast, but even that is 
lacking this time around. Let's be honest, most of the young actors on stage are not on the A or 
even B list of local talent available. 

The voices are largely weak, the dancing rudimentary and the acting skills non-existent. 

There are a few exceptions. Jamie McKnight makes a strong impression in the leading role of Claude, radiating
charisma and fear at the same time, while singing with full-throated commitment. 

Andrew Kushnir is very amusing as the fey jester, Woof, while Matthew Boden turns his brief cameo as Margaret Mead
into the most securely acted and sung moment of the night. 

But the rest! Karen Burthwright shrieks her way through Sheila, Craig Burnatowski is a non-stop 
smirk as Berger and Kimmy Choi was unable to earn a single laugh (at the preview I saw) with
the sure-fire comedy song "Frank Mills."




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