I expected Hair to be a nostalgic experience--maybe foolish, but probably fun. What I didn't expect was that this debut production from the Tonkawa Theatre Tribe would be touching, moving, even stirring; yet it was all of those things. Whether or not the war in Iraq duplicates the Vietnam war in other ways, the challenge it poses to stay true to oneself without betraying friends or country is exactly the same.
For anyone who spent the 60s on the moon (or in utero), Hair concerns a loose "tribe" of hippies living on the streets of the West Village. As they spoof their parents, the authorities and themselves, they also face the serious question of whether and when the men among them will report for the draft. Claude Hooper Bukowksi (the sweet-faced sweet-voiced Steve Tomlitz) is the next to go, while Berger (Zach Laliberte, in a tour de force) watches his friend and prepares to judge Claude's decision while weighing his own. They are the twin suns of this solar system; the other men (variously gay, of color, or both) and all the women revolve around them, a fact that expresses the casual racism and sexism of the show's original period. While pantomiming sex and drug use, or just singing and dancing, the tribe simultaneously ridicules society's institutions and displays its own pathology. These apostles of love mistreat each other (Berger impregnates Claude's girlfriend while ignoring the woman who loves him), and despite their claims of being a "family" lack the essential component of family life: a home. Using dialogue sparingly, the show lurches from song to song, merely sketching its characters' lives until a collective Act II acid trip paints them in Day-Glo and shines on them a harsh black light.
Neither the 1969 Broadway version nor the mid-Eighties revival carried as much conviction and passion as this young troupe's rendition. Before intermission I retained appropriate critical distance, noting dispassionately the limitations of Claude's acting and Berger's singing, but by Act II I'd simply surrendered to the cast's intensity, and was honored to be invited to dance onstage with them during an extended post-curtain "Let the Sunshine In." Moreover, the following morning I was still thinking about the tears streaking down the actors' cheeks, and still feeling the immediacy they'd brought to a script as dated in some ways as Little Mary Sunshine.
The production features exceptionally strong voices, especially those of Natalie Levine as Sheila (whose instrument is so powerful that she actually needs to check it a bit, or risk over-emoting as she does during "Good Morning, Starshine") and of music director Isaiah Robinson as Ronny, whose pure-tenor rendition of "Aquarius" at the top of the show sets the highest possible bar for everything that comes after. My only complaint about Robinson is that we don't get to hear him enough.
Director Danny Bernardo has done a fine job of pacing the piece, and of acknowledging its period nature without allowing it to become quaint. His choreographic choices are a bit more questionable: the unison dancing seems at odds with the anarchic energy of the show. But it's well executed and fun to look at and doesn't go to Broadway high-kick extremes. Bernardo's only out-and-out mistake is having Claude strip naked to sing "Where Do I Go?" While obviously intended to convey vulnerability, the nakedness instead poses an insuperable obstacle to the audience in the nature of "Where Do I Look?" Extended nudity may have worked when the company workshopped the production in a big college theater (though I doubt it), but in the tiny confines of the Strawdog space it's merely an embarrassment. We're supposed to be listening to a young man's meditations on his future, not staring at (or averting our eyes from) the backlit hairs on his tush. Likewise we should spend the show wondering whether Claude will enlist rather than grasping instantly from his terrible wig that he'll end up with a buzz-cut.
Fortunately, the acting burden in the show isn't really on Claude, who's essentially a Christ-like sacrificial lamb. It's Berger (in a role half-Judas, half-Peter) whose job it is to reflect the conflicts of their seemingly care-free state, a task for which Laliberte is superbly fitted. Though I wanted to be able to read Claude's fate on his own face rather than on Berger's, given the sensitivity of Laliberte's performance it was no hardship to have to refer to him for the emotional truth of any encounter.
What a piece of work this is.