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

[Michael Butler]

Toby?
Thanks so much for sending us such a detailed and level critique of Gate's
HAIR.
Michael

> 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.
> 
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