I saw Hair at the Delacorte in Central Park last night. Ask me anything.

[BurtWorm]

Hey! This is my first ask me anything thread!

:bounce:

[latebloomer]

1. Did they take off their clothes

as they did in the original production?

[BurtWorm]

3. Yes.

Did you see the original production? Or one of them?

[latebloomer]

9. Yep, and it was great!

Early 70s, I think.

[BurtWorm]

10. Where did you see it? On Broadway?

[latebloomer]

11. Yes, I did! n/t

[Betty88]

2. Jumptheshadow and I saw it Friday

they did do the nude thing, one of the cast was happy....

[BurtWorm]

4. From where we were sitting, you almost couldn't tell the boys from the girls

and none seemed unduly happy.

Did you enjoy it? (The show I meant. Not the "happiness.")

[Betty88]

6. we enjoyed it very much

It was Jump's birthday and a beautiful night in the park.

[SacredCow]

5. I saw it here a few months ago....

for the first time ever.

[BurtWorm]

7. Where is there?

[SacredCow]

8. Baton Rouge, LA...

In one of the more progressive theatres.

[LisaM]

12. Lucky you!

Was it great?

[BurtWorm]

13. It was pretty darn good.

Made me nostalgic for when I first heard those songs as a kid. The band was great. The signing was mostly really great.

I will say one thing that threw me off a little from total enjoyment: there's a style of professional singing now that is ubiquitous; you hear it in a lot of Broadway shows. It's a little impersonal. Technically, it's very good, but it doesn't leave much room for the idiosyncracies of the individual singer, which is what made Broadway from before the blockbusters of the 1980s and 1990s such a pleasure. A few of the soloists in this show sing in that style, and, frankly, it doesn't mesh with what Hair is about, in my opinion. It spoils the illusion, more to the point, that it's 1968 when some of the soloists sound a little like they're auditioning for American Idol.

But that's a quibble. For the most part, it remains faithful to the original spirit of the show. It doesn't condescend. You don't laugh at the show, you laugh with it. That's quite a trick.

[LisaM]

14. I was obsessed by the show when I was a kid

I wanted to be old enough to be in it, I had the poster, I had the album, the book (and the second album, "Disinherited", that had the blotted out nudie pictures in the middle), and finally when it came to Detroit I wangled my grandmother into taking me to see it for a matinee, which she did (in exchange for not biting my fingernails). It was a strange audience, a lot of older women at a matinee, and one child. The ladies applauded the nude scene very daintily.

The most striking memory I have was that Meatloaf sang "Aquarius". Of course, he was unknown at the time, but he sang, without a microphone as far as I recall, from the top reaches of the theatre. It was astonishing, and we noted his name. I have to give kudos to my grandmother for taking me, though it was better than the outing she took my sister on, which was to see the Osmond Brothers.

They did a version in Seattle a few years ago, right around the start of the Iraq War (I think it was a couple of months before, but it seemed so inevitable) and the war part was really spooky.

[Sanity Claws]

15. When did you get tickets?

[BurtWorm]

16. The day of the show.

You line up and wait till 1:00, when they hand them out, two to a person. We got there at about 11:00. If you're hungry and you don't have food with you, you can order from a local deli and they'll deliver to you on the line.

[jumptheshadow]

17. We ordered from that deli, too

The food was so fresh! They must turn it over very quickly during the summer.

The show was good but certain segments and individual performances were better than others and outshone the troupe's performance as a whole. It's still in preview mode, though, and the cast was rehearsing before the house opened.

The album was played all the time in my house when I was a teenager, but I had never seen the live performance. Which led me to the question:

Why was there a nude scene at all? For shock value? To poke a finger at authority? Is it an allusion to the physicality of "I Got Life?" In the film Milos Forman interpreted the nude scene as a naked swim in the pond, framing it as fun-loving and carefree. It had a different flavor than the cast dumping their clothes and standing as a group facing the audience.

Anyway, this is a wonderful outdoor summer in New York. Last week we saw Mark Knopfler and Hair in Central Park. Next month it's Dylan in Prospect Park. Throw in the concerts on beautiful Governor's Island and there's no other place I would rather be.

[BurtWorm]

22. We went to Governor's Island the day before

and the best thing abut it (besides the unusual perspective on the city and the strange little suburban ghost town atmosphere) was the overwhelming preponderance of New Yorkers in the home team-to-visitors ratio. Nothing against tourists, but there's a totally different feel when the touring crowd is mostly from Manhattan and Brooklyn.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

18. Saw it on Broadway in 1969

and they got nekkid! Loved it (not just because of the nekkid people). I suppose it seems really dated now, but it was the thing in '69.

[struggle4progress]

19. Did they sing the LBJ IRT song?

[jumptheshadow]

21. Yes, they did

Although it dated the production a bit, you thought, "40 years later and we're in another dirty little war."

[Shine]

20. Cool. I know somebody who was in the original Broadway production.

Nudity, drugs, long hair....the works. :evilgrin:

Of course, he's in his 60's now.