Let The Sun Shine In

So thanks to my mom who waited for four hours in line to get the last tickets in the house, we made it in to the theater to see Hair in Central Park last night. I am certainly glad that I went - the actors all had very strong voices, the band was rockin', the songs were as catchy as ever (I had forgotten that Good Morning Starshine came from Hair) but something just didn't quite work for me. Perhaps it was just that our seats were in the back corner but I just didn't feel engaged for most of the show and just sort of passively enjoyed the songs (which jump very quickly from one to the next). The cast was jumping around, running out into the audience and interacting with audience members (my mom got a kiss on the head from one actress during the song "Hair") and it was entertaining but it just didn't grab me. Hair is a bit of a strange show which just jumps from song to song but I felt that given our current political climate, the show could have tried to make a more relevant point about today. Instead, it was just an excuse to travel down 60s nostalgia lane like a doo-wop show would do for the 50s or a disco revue for the 70s.

However, I do have to say that the last sequence of the show from the singing of Flesh Failures, into Let the Sun Shine In and the curtain call with its reprise of Hair and Let the Sun Shine In (combined with the traditional invitation to audience members to dance their way on to the stage) had a lot of genuine energy and message and was loads of fun and brilliantly done. Those fifteen minutes certainly stayed with me as I left and made the whole evening worthwhile but I just wish the energy of those fifteen minutes had been present through the entire production - that would have been something worth seeing!