[Mb-hair] HAIR-London TIMES review

[Michael Butler]

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

    


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