[Mb-hair] Hair in Toronto

[Harold Sifton]

FYI,
Harry




Age of Aquarius to make comeback with Toronto stage revival of Hair 
JOHN MCKAY



TORONTO (CP) - "Now more than ever" is the slogan on posters for a major stage revival of Hair, the 1960s rock musical that Toronto's CanStage will open March 20 with an all-Canadian cast of young performers. 

On hand for a media sneak preview Thursday was James Rado who created the original Broadway theatre sensation with the late Gerome Ragni and Montrealer Galt MacDermot. Rado is from Washington, D.C., Ragni was from Pittsburgh. 

Dressed in faded jeans, with shaggy hair poking out from under a woollen tuque, Rado said the Age of Aquarius is still with us, and so Hair's make-love-not-war message remains relevant. 

"The world's at war today and I think that's very bad," said Rado, who declined to give his age but, according to biographies, was born in 1932. 

"That's the main issue, I think, the human condition and our whole relationship with other nations, other peoples and ourselves." 

Martin Bragg, artistic producer for the non-profit CanStage theatre company, said that as a teenager he saw the original Hair at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre and it changed his life, propelling him into the world of theatre. 

He said the target audience will be a mixture, from boomers to youngsters like his own teenagers. 

"My three kids are dying to see the show. They're 18, 16 and 14 (and) I think there's a whole other generation between us that has been listening to that music for nigh onto 30 years now." 

The youthful cast of 21, which had been rehearsing for only three days, performed still-rough but energetic versions of two numbers, Aquarius and Hair, for the assembled media. Only one of the singers was significantly hairy, another was a skinhead. So it looks like there will be some bushy wigs in place when the curtain rises next month. 

"A lot of magic is going to be happening between now and then," agreed a grinning Rado, who explained that this Hair will be an approach that he's been working on for 15 years. 

In addition to all-new staging, the original script has been "expanded and deepened," Rado said, adding that MacDermot initially resisted changes but finally gave his blessing. 

"He's 100 per cent, wholeheartedly behind this." 

While there have been college campus and repertory productions over the years, this will be the first major revival in North America in more than three decades. 

Bragg conceded they got the idea for a media peek from "another little show down the road" that did the same thing. Lord of the Rings plans to open a week earlier than Hair. In both cases, Bragg said, London and Broadway will be watching closely. 

"There are a lot of eyes on this," he said. "And I think that if this production . . . (is successful), this will be the next launch of Hair." 

The original Hair premiered off-Broadway in 1967 and won rave reviews. It moved to Broadway the following year where it ran for more than 1,800 performances. There were subsequent morality disputes in Boston and Tennessee over its perceived anti-flag and general anti-American message, to say nothing of the brief all-nude appearance by the cast, all of which seems quaint today. 

By the time director Milos Forman got around to making the film version for Hollywood in 1979, the disco generation had supplanted the hippie era and Hair seemed very dated. 

Rado doesn't see any censorship problems facing the new production. 

"Today almost anything goes, I guess the theatre is pretty wide open," he said. "Hair is not a rough show. So many of the things out today are much more explicit in language and so forth." 

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