Ragni, Gerome - Clive Barnes

CLIVE BARNES

What is so likable about "Hair" …? I think it is simply that it is so likable. So new, so fresh and so unassuming, even in its pretensions….

[When it was off-Broadway] its music came across with a kind of acid-rock, powerhouse lyricism, but the book, concerning the life and times of hippie protest was as rickety as a knock-kneed centipede.

Now the authors of the dowdy book—and brilliant lyrics—have done a very brave thing. They have in effect done away with it altogether. "Hair" is now a musical with a theme, not with a story. Nor is this all that has been done in this totally new, all lit-up, gas-fired, speed-marketed Broadway version. For one thing it has been made a great deal franker. In fact it has been made into the frankest show in town—and this has been a season not noticeable for its verbal or visual reticence….

[A] great many four-letter words, such as "love," are used very freely. At one point—in what is...

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