Without reservation, I recommend to you Hair as the most energetic and most entertaining musical on Broadway this year...and maybe, for many years to come.

It is an outrageous show...outrageously funny, outrageously tuneful, outrageously caustic...and in sum, marvelously enjoyable.

First of all, forget everything you've ever thought of as Broadway musical comedy.  You walk in, and the curtain is up...on a stage filled with all sorts of clutter and lights and pipes and scaffolds.  And the cast, 2 dozen or so long haired hippies, is roaming about the theatre...handing out flowers, chatting with the audience.  then, faintly at first, weird electronic sounds are heard...and the cast, in slow motion almost floats from the audience onto the stage...and the music builds to a rock hat never stops pulsating until the final curtain.  In fact, after...because by then, the whole audience is clapping and stomping along.

Caution: Mary Poppins this ain't.  There is an abundant supply of four-letter words... and a few longer ones that are even more descriptive.  there are songs that take apart religion, race, middle class mores, and Vietnam.  And there is one scene...a be-in...in which half the cast winds up completely nude.  No, don't run to see it for that.  It's played for shock vlaue...and happens so fast you're only aghast after the curtain falls.

Of the uniformly great cast, may I single out Lynn Kellogg, a gorgeous blonde with voice to match...and James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who also wrote Hair.

It is loose, free-wheeling and fun. I dare you to keep from tapping your feet.  It sweeps Broadway like a breath of fresh air.
 

Copyright WNEW Radio.