Hair Musica

Hair Musica
Book: James Rado
Music: Gait MacDermot
Lyrics: Gerome Ragni
Director: Diane Pauliis
Gielgud Theatre,
London Wl
(0844-482 5130)
Running time:
2hrs 25mins
Premiered in New York in
1967, James Rado and

Gerome Ragni s Hair, the hippy musical, was infamous as the first show in which everyone took their clothes off. It has now been revived, and the only shock is how "quaint" it seems, said Tim Walker in The Sunday Telegraph. "Saccharine rather than sensual", it is in fact "as far away from pushing any boundary as a Sunday-night re-run of Last of the Summer Wine". The plot - set against


"exultant new life". Led by Gavin Creel as Claude, Caissic Levy as Sheila and Will Swenson as the stoned Berger, the cast has a "cascading energy", while Karole Armitage*s choreography "keeps the joint jumping".
"This is surely a musical whose time has come again," agreed Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph. "Fuelled in 1968 by anger about the war in

Vietnam, it seems especially pertinent now in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan." Particularly in the second half, the show's theme "goes beyond hippy-dippy idealism": the mood darkens, with a "scary bad-trip sequence, and the likeable Claude being sent to Vietnam". By the end. Hair is "a heartfelt lament for Man's fallen state".