HAIR....again.

So as I wrote a little bit ago thatI went and saw "HAIR" twice when I was in Toronto. Well, when I was home in Chicago I dug and dug in my many packed up belongings for my original soundtrack recording...couldn't find it so I bought a new one. I'm glad I did, I got a bonus disc with it with tracks that were only in the off broadway production. Anyway...point is that I am once again obsessed with "HAIR". I cant help it. These two guys pictured I had huge crushes on through the entire show. Jamie Mcknight (top picture) is hot hot HOT and can sing like no other, he was brilliant beyond just being beautiful to look at. Zachary Stevenson(middle pic) is the one I had my crush on most of the evening, he was just tall and tone and slender and delicious....and later we ran into him and some others at a bar and hung with them. Katrina Reynolds (the girl) had me and my friend Erika over for drinks...thats when I found out Zachary was straight and that Katrina makes a mean cosmo.....and that Erika loves the porcelain god. This picture does not do Zachary justice. The show got mixed reviews but I thought it was excellent from start to finish. The reviewer below at one point says "Why revive HAIR? why NOW?"....my response to that is WHY NOT NOW??? I wish this show was playing on Broadway right now. America could use it. I mean....why now? Why "the wedding singer-the musical" now? Dont ask a stupid questions like "why now?" when it comes to HAIR. There is never a wrong time to revive it! Me likey and wish I could see again before it closes in 5 weeks. If you get to Toronto any time soon check it out!


Groovy 'Hair' opens in Toronto
Production steps back in time to Let The Sunshine In, once again
By STEVE TILLEY-- Toronto Sun



TORONTO - Unkempt, sexy, colourful and maybe in need of a little trim here and there -- that's hair, and that's Hair.
From the beads-wearing flower children distributing hand-rolled fatties to audience members taking their seats (no word on whether the herbal contents were real, but I'd assume not) to the genuinely heart-plucking finale of Let The Sunshine In, the '60s have been reborn in a single evening.
Or so I assume. Hair-aware columnist Jim Slotek was supposed to be reviewing last night's CanStage premiere of the tie-dyed musical at the Bluma Appel Theatre, but was called out of town unexpectedly to talk to Jimmy Buffett. Long story.
Into the breach steps yours truly, born the same year the show is set (1968) and completely virginal, Hair-wise. Never saw the Milos Forman movie, never got high to the LP soundtrack, never heard of most of the songs save for the unavoidable pop culture troika of Aquarius, Good Morning Starshine and Let The Sunshine In.
But that's OK. Hair isn't so much a story peppered with songs as it is a whole bunch of songs -- 48, to be exact -- telling the story of the Tribe, a group of New Yorkers embracing the dawning of the Age of Aquarius with open hearts, blown minds, and lots of sex.
They love, they sing, they take baby steps towards social responsibility and equality, they protest the war in Vietnam -- the Iraq war parallels resonate less profoundly than you might assume -- and they lose one of their number to those jungles on the other side of the world. And, well, that's about it.

Under the deft and confident direction of Robert A. Prior (who is smooth of pate and probably tired of the obvious jokes), the cast of 19 young, pretty and impossibly energetic actors do the unexpected by convincingly finding a balance between character and caricature. By the time the two-and-a-half hours are up, you'll love them all unconditionally, and not just because you've seen them completely naked during the famous nude scene at the end of Act 1.
(Curiously, for a show called Hair, many of the actors have almost none of the stuff below the neck. No self-respecting hippie would wax his chest or trim her, um, Garden of Eden.)
Once the familiar music and great voices and creative set design and trippy projected visuals have faded away, though, you have to wonder: Why revive Hair, and why now? It's too cool to be kitschy but still too far removed to feel truly relevant.
Still, it's happy-sad-sexy-fun. Almost enough to make a guy believe this mythic '60s thing really happened. And almost enough to make him nostalgic for something he never actually saw.