[Mb-hair] HAIR Report

[Michael Harris]

John - thanks so much for your report on the new HAIR production.  I was glad to see "Let The Sun Shine In" restored to the feeling of the original Broadway ending.

This business of turning "The Flesh Failures" into a "happy hippie celebration" with the audience joining the cast on stage to boogie was never part of the original Broadway staging by Tom O'Horgan during my eleven months with the show.  That goofy element evolved later and, in my opinion, robbed the ending of its power and message.

Our original Broadway ending was the way you describe this newest California production. In Tom's original treatment "The Flesh Failures (Let The Sun Shine In)" left the audience in shock at what had happened to Claude (to the youth of America), and was delivered not as a happy finale but as a desperate plea to the audience and to the world.

It was only when the curtain call music (the song HAIR) began, and we took our bows, that the mood lightened a bit. But the curtain call went by in a flash, leaving power of that final plea hanging in the air.

It gave the people something real to feel and consider on their way home.

WMH