Though you will undoubtedly recognise some of the exhilarating tunes from the 1967 hippy ‘tribal love rock musical’, as it was originally billed, this new production of Hair is in every other way such a startling and radical reinvention that it is virtually a new show.
A musical about the uncertainties and pressures of youth has, appropriately, moved with the times, whereas the last London revival at the Old Vic in 1993 disastrously didn’t and made it seem merely like a quaint period piece. Now, however, a sixties musical has been sent hurtling into a 21st century, where to be young is to be faced with an ever-more bewildering world.
Director Daniel Kramer, himself only in his mid-20s, makes sense of it and the world of this show, in a frequently hallucinogenic, drug-fuelled fantasia of wild sex, paranoia and politics.
As the show follows lost Claude - outstanding recent RADA graduate Charles Aitken - on his Prozac-popping, iPod-attached journey towards trying to find meaning in his life by signing up for the army and a posting to Iraq, it is freshly galvanised into a gritty, edgy fable that scandalises and thrills in equal measure.
While the original West End production of Hair in 1969 was famous for introducing full stage nudity to the stage here, this production frequently gets downright raunchy. But even more shocking than the sex should be the violence and so it proves here, with images torn from the pages of the newspapers, such as the famous torture scenes from Abu Ghraib prison.
With a stunning ensemble cast of 16 that also includes stand-out turns from Kevin Wathen, Golda Rosheuvel and Joanna Ampil, the stage explodes in a riot of outrageous choreography from Ann Yee and tremendous musical accompaniment from Steve Hill’s four-piece band.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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