Ragni, Gerome - Clive Barnes
CLIVE BARNES
"Hair" is beautiful…. Nearly a year after the opening, the show has a kind of radiant freshness. It still seems as though the whole thing is swiftly, deftly and dazzlingly being improvised before your very eyes….
Seeing "Hair" again did raise a few questions. Its success stems from two things. First its perfect reflection of a generation that seems in no mood to lower its voice—it knows what whispering can do to people. Second the music by Galt MacDermot and the lyrics by Ragni and Rado. This is pop-pop, or commercial pop, with little aspirations to art—a clever and honest dilution of what is happening in pop music. Fundamentally it is pure Broadway—but Broadway 1969 rather than Broadway 1949.
Then I found myself thinking about so many of the misconceptions about "Hair," which seem to have risen among that great section of the public who have never seen the show.
People say that it attracts only middle-aged suburbanites...
[The entire page is 355 words long]
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