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Hair at Thomaston Opera House
You've all heard about Hair, right, that hippie play? That avant-garde Broadway version of free love, seasoned with pot?
It's a shame that's what most people have heard and read … and little else. The reality of Hair is so much more than hippies set to music. The play attempts (and usually succeeds) in capturing the free spirit of disenchanted, enchanted young people who drop in to their own way of life. The songs celebrate freedom and poke fun at Establishment values, and dances don't resemble Broadway production numbers; the dancers resemble real people with energy.
On February 2, 1962, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all aligned in the constellation Aquarius. All of these heavenly bodies had not come together for 2,500 years. Many people believed it was the dawning of a new age, the age of Aquarius, symbolizing a pooling of everyone's creativity, an age of communalism.
Back in the late 1960s, the artists of off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway had been complaining that the professional theatre was dead, and even worse, that it was boring. Hair was the revolution they had been waiting for. The show rejected every convention of Broadway, of traditional theatre in general, and of the American musical in specific. And it was brilliant.
Hair criticizes and satirizes racism, discrimination, war, violence, pollution, sexual repression, and other societal evils. It is a truly psychedelic musical (in the every sense of the word), perhaps the only one ever on Broadway. The show is made up of a barrage of images, often very surrealistic, often overwhelming, coming at the audience fast and furious, not always following logically; but when taken together, those images form a wonderful, unified, and ultimately comprehensible whole.
As with most satire, Hair makes fun of racism, war, sex, and other things by carrying them to ridiculous extremes. Hair shocks the audience (though that is not really its goal) by challenging what they believe, by showing how absurd, how offensive, how nonsensical, and in some cases, how dangerous are the behavior and language that society calls "normal." And the show asks some good questions: Why did we send American soldiers halfway around the world to Vietnam to kill strangers when there was no direct threat to our country? Why can't we talk openly about sex? Why are certain words "dirty" and other words that mean the same thing acceptable? Why are there so many offensive words for black people but hardly any for white people?
The Thomaston Opera House production is directed and choreographed by Sharon A. Wilcox with musical direction by David Irvine. It features Tom Denihan as Berger and Dan Ringuette as Claude, and features an ensemble cast of 24 performers.
Hair will be at the Thomaston Opera House for eight performances from January 25 through February 9. Tickets are $15 in advance or $18 at the door, and can be reserved by calling the box office at 860-283-6250. There will be an opening night reception for all audience members in the Lena Morton Gallery on Level 3 before the performance on Saturday, January 25. Please note that due to the content of this musical, it is not recommended for young children.
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