Opening last night on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre was a new musical called hair.  Now I did not see this show ehen it opened off-Broadway earlier this season...but ladies and gentlemen, the production that opened last night is a gas.

Hair is a gas.  It is a likeable humorous show, with driving music, marvelous staging, and the most exuberant cast to hit Broadway this season.  There is really no story line to Hair.  A tribe of some two-dozen hippies, after burning incense and distributing flowers to the audience, arrives onstage...and they proceed to belt out about 30 numbers.  And as the drums throb and the hippies dance, they spill out all over the theatre: climbing up catwalks, riding motorcycles through the aisles, swinging out over the audience on ropes hanging from the balcony.  And, oh yes, at the end of Act I, six boys and girls are onstage stark, raving naked.  As for the songs, they satirize a wide range of targets, with Vietnam and race relations getting the most attention.  Some of this stuff is not easy to take: The American flag is treated with humerous scorn, Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address as one of the Ink Spots, and shouted out constantly isn that worst four-letter word...with many hyphenated variations.  there is also some alleged humor that is labored corn, and the screaming decible-level of the show may give you a headache.  Still, Hair is exciting.

There are dirty words in Hair, and naked people, and disturbing ideas.

But there is also a freshness, a zest, and a charged effervescense that no musical has had on Broadway this season.

You might leave the kids home, but by all means see it yourself.