“Hair”: The Original Nude-sical
I’ve always found the 1979 Milos Forman movie version of the tribal-rock musical “Hair” to be far more enjoyable than any fully staged production. Forman wisely altered a story that had only made sense if your drugs happened to kick in at the exact moment the curtain rose. He also played with the song order. The result, even with Twyla Tharp’s overpraised bloom-off-the-flower-children choreography, was enjoyable in a shaggy-dog sort of way.
The staging of “Hair” that kicked off Saturday night in Central Park‘s Delacorte, starring Jonathan Groff (pictured here) and finishing its free, tough-ticket run on Monday, was among the weaker “Hair” dos that I’ve encountered. The antiwar message felt more preachy than ever and the songs tended not to take off. Still, the audience — many weren’t alive when Forman’s film came out, to say nothing of the original 1967 production– seemed to be having a good time. As with the messy new movie “Across the Universe,” which puts the Beatles in a blender, this “Hair” this was happening, man. Among the cast, only Will Swenson as Berger (Treat Williams in the movie) impressed me. Groff did a surprisingly effeminate reading of Claude, and the prurient folks who showed up to check out this “Spring Awakening” star in the nude were disappointed. Watching him in that big scene, I thought of what The New Yorker headlined its review of Forman’s movie: “Fuzz.”
