[Mb-hair] London Gate Theatre adaptation of Hair (SPOILERS!)

[toby at MusicAlly.com]

Hello from London, England.

Newbie alert: I recently joined the list. Having spent a bit of time reading
through the past couple of months' messages, I thought I'd share my thoughts
on the new adaptation of Hair which is showing in London. So if you're
planning to go and don't want to see any SPOILERS, don't read ahead!

First a bit of background on my experience of Hair. I discovered the show
during the early 90s (my early teens) when it was staged by the Old Vic
theatre in London. That show was fairly dire in retrospect, not coming at a
particularly politically apposite time and coming a decade before the Old
Vic was re-born with Kevin Spacey in the artistic hot-seat. Still, I
listened to the soundtrack album from the Old Vic show repeatedly, then a
few years later obtained a video of the movie, in which I immersed myself.

(I appreciate from reading the archive that some of you do not like the
film. Personally, though I agree it has its problems, particularly towards
the beginning, I think Foreman's version is superb adaptation that adds the
kind of characterisation, plot and empathy which is pre-requisite in a movie
more than in a a stage play.)

Since the advent of internet music I've been able to listen to at least one
other Hair soundtrack, maybe more. I also narrowly missed seeing a staging
of Hair in Los Angeles about six years ago. So you can imagine my excitement
when I heard a version of Hair was being staged in London. However, upon
telephoning, I was told that the entire run was sold out. That was several
weeks ago; this weekend I received an e-mail informing me that some returns
had become available... and I bought two for Saturday's matinée.

The Gate is a very small studio style theatre above a pub in the fashionable
/ vaguely artsy (but mostly now just wealthy) area of Notting Hill. It is an
odd theatre in that it is long and shallow, with the audience sitting just
two rows deep across the theatre's long side. I'd estimate the theatre fits
about 80 guests; I paid £20 each for my tickets. Not much by West End
musical standards, but quite a lot by repertory theatre standards.

All things considered, I really enjoyed the show. More so than a lot of
London theatre - of which I see quite a bit. Certainly it was far more
exciting and nerve-tingling than the much-feted Guys and Dolls, which seemed
flat and even backwards by comparison. However, the Gate production is in
many regards monumentally flawed. As much as I whooped for joy at the
powerful, successful segments, I cringed with embarrassment at the banal,
heavy-handed sections.

First impression was one of bafflement. One of the initial sounds one hears
is a radio being tuned, with strains of Britney Spears emerging through the
ether. As the cast enter, one tribe member is wearing an iPod with those
signature white earbuds. Aha. This is Hair set in the present day. Or
rather, some undefined post-911, post 7/7 Iraq era with a massive dose of
Naomi Klein 1990s anti-corporate, anti-globalisation politics thrown in.
(The stage curtain carries a massive Coca-Cola inspired logo.)

The opening scene is a mime sequence in which Claude and Berger travel by
New York metro, one narrowly avoiding a suspected terrorist bomb, before
introducing themselves to the audience.

The Tribe arrives looking like something out of Fame or Flashdance: some
wearing rainbow-striped skateboard kneepads, many with shocking pink
facepaint on and all (except Claude) with the asymmetrical, semi-shaved
haircuts usually sported by the denizens of London's trendy Hoxton district.
For a crowd supposedly plucked from the present day they look utterly 80s,
an area of real incongruence. (The references to condoms and HIV which
appear towards the beginning of the show also come across as somehow
out-dated, bringing to mind the health campaigns of the 80s rather than the
rather more lax attitude to safe sex that many 21st century young people
seem to have.)

In the opening dance scene the Tribe is surrounded by an establishment of
zombie citizens, symbolised by cast members wearing black priest or judge's
robes. Each zombie carries in its mouth a different icon 20th century
consumerism - from Snickers bar wrappers to the Atkins Diet book to a
cellphone. Hence the theme of commercialism, which is only mildly alluded to
in the original, is made very explicit. Meanwhile the terrorism theme
returns time and time again; and sometimes the lyrics are changed to match -
for example "256 terrorists captured" instead of "Viet Cong captured". The
big be-in scene is set at one of the post-911 candle-lit vigils, with lyrics
changed to "Love, peace, candles, happiness."

Why are the Tribe together? In this version, all of them are students at
NYU. The characterisations themselves have been re-imagined. Claude is
reticent and manic depressive, though it's never entirely clear why he would
want to join the US Army. Supposedly he wants to go in order to get his
education paid for. There's an odd tangent in which Claude ends up spaced
out on Prozac (something which I believe, medically speaking, is not
entirely possible.)

Hud is now a woman - with a spectacular voice and buckets of personality.
Woof is now 100% gay, in fact the gayest gay one is ever likely to see on
stage... a very fun, camp performance complete with a trademark canine growl
and clawing hand-gestures. But perhaps a little too stereotyped for my
likeing. Woof has "H.I.V.I.P" tattooed on his chest - and I'm still trying
to figure out whether it was permanent or something just for the show.

The post-911 anti-terrorist theme turns up in some of the set-piece dance
scenes. Most memorably in a semi-naked Abu Graib sequence which features a
pyramid of tortured inmates with bags over their heads. While now is a good
moment to be making a reference to the anti-Vietnam sentiment of the
original Hair, I feel the director struggles to make a proper comparison
with today's political milieu.

No longer are we in an era during which growing one's hair long is a sign of
rebellion. UK and US citizens, especially in big cities, can today for the
most part feel free to wear their hair however they like - and they
certainly don't need to worry about being drafted for the army and having
their hair cut off. Hence in this production the song Hair (which
incidentally is one of the highlights of the Gate show) comes across not as
symbolic of non-conformism but merely as a celebration of fancy haircuts!

Much is made in the production literature of how the cast's hair has been
sponsored and styled by the Vidal Sassoon salon; clothes company Gap is
another of the sponsors. So while I sympathise with the producers' need to
finance an adventurous production, the play does seem to promote the very
corporate ideals that it seeks to criticise, while in my opinion missing
some of the more relevant themes that are so key to the original show.
Indeed not a lock of hair is ever cut from Claude's head during the
production, symbolic or otherwise.

Some of the most heavy-handed stuff comes during several music-less spoken
comedy sequences featuring caricatures of George Bush and Condoleeza Rice in
a gameshow environment. These are the worst scenes and, though a few cheap
laughs are raised, they seemed to drag by comparison to the song and dance
sections.

So is there nothing good about the Gate production? Quite the opposite.
There's plenty to rave about - most obviously the fantastic cast, which
deserves every plaudit going for their exuberance and skill. It really was a
joy to see these kids in action and clearly they were having a lot of fun,
improvising, interacting and messing around during the performance much as
I'd expect any good Tribe to! So alive was the show that I got the
impression it would have carried on even if there was no audience in the
room to enjoy it. They just seemed to love what they were doing.

The naked scenes - of which there were a lot - were fun rather than smutty,
though I got the sense that the director felt he really had to push the boat
out to compete with outlets like MTV which thrust sexuality into the
airwaves day in, day out. (The "White Boys / Black Boys" sequence made
strong references to MTV and stars like Christina Aguilera, with added S&M
outfits for the boys.) Things did occasionally veer towards silly, though,
and I am still bemused by the climax of "I Got Life" in which Claude
smothers himself in ketchup from a squeezy bottle!

As most members of the cast get the chance to have a solo sing of their own,
I was continually surprised that nearly every single member of the cast was
a superbly strong singer. Most sang without that Broadway blandness that one
expects from a traditional musical - indeed the only singers I didn't
appreciate were those employing a flat Broadway delivery or alternatively an
over-egged pop soul vocal style.

Save for Claude's, the American accents were really impressive. I've seen a
lot of London shows in which the cast's US accents are questionable, but
there was a neat range of different regions represented and in quite a
convincing fashion considering these are for the most part all young English
actors. Until I discovered that the director is American I was wondering how
the show managed to get so many obscure US cultural references right. Of
course I'm not saying that it would fool all American theatregoers, just
that the Americanisms were much better than one would expect in London.

In terms of the songs, I think they stuck quite closely to the original
musical rather than making the cuts of the movie. The big "hit" songs,
particularly those used in the film, come across extremely well - while some
of the other songs such as "Going Down" and "Frank Mills" are a bit weak.

The band was great; most of the arrangements were interesting and
contemporary, though with a few detours into theatrical pop cheese that I
could have done without. Best of all for me was the fact that only a few
members of the cast were ever mic'ed up at one time, using handheld radio
microphones - the rest were unamplified. So there was this gorgeous effect
in the small space of hearing 20 people singing at the top of their voices,
in harmony, with a few soloists amplified over the top. Occasionally the
sound engineer would mix the entire band down, or the band would drop out
altogether, so that the chorus could be heard singing a capella. Extremely
powerful, life-affirming stuff.

In retrospect, I'm fighting to some degree against my love of the show as a
whole and the movie in particular. But I think that classics like Hair (yes,
Hair has acquired that status, and the sold-out nature of the Gate run
confirms that) should be open to re-interpretation and I applaud the Gate
for giving it a go. My reservations are due to the fact that I don't think
some of the interpretations make a lot of sense; some are inconsistent, some
are irrelevant, some are just too obvious for their own good.

Particularly confusing is Claude's death scene: he has joined the army, been
forced to torture an alleged terrorist inmate (or was that a dream
sequence?) and finally commits suicide. Apparently the pressure of being a
middle class white university student in today's globalised post-911 world
becomes too much for Claude, and he sticks a gun in his mouth. To me it came
across as slightly daft rather than having the emotional weight I expected.

But when the cast ended on "Let The Sun Shine In", vocal lines interweaving
in a capella, it was impossible not to be swept up - I even noticed several
audience members crying. The sheer passion of the Gate team is not in
question and I would recommend the show for that reason alone. The music and
cast are gutsy and I really hope they get a chance to take the songs of Hair
to a wider London audience, hopefully with a tour or a West End run.