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<b>music by Galt MacDermot, book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni & James Rado, directed by Robert A. Prior
CanStage and Dancap Private Equity Inc.,
Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
March 30-June 17, 2006
</b>
CanStage is currently presenting the first major Canadian revival of the musical <i>Hair</i> in over thirty years. Sadly, the general effect is of a high school production with a large, misspent budget.
What keeps <i>Hair </i>alive is its amazing sequence of hit songs, not its flimsy story. Claude (Jamie McKnight), who hangs out with the “Tribe” of hippies living in a city park, is drafted to fight in Vietnam, but despite pleas from his friends Berger (Craig Burnatowski) and Sheila (Karen Burthwright) and an extended dream warning of doom, he goes off to fight without explanation. What the show needs is strong direction to provide a throughline that the book does not, but director Robert A. Prior and designer Dany Lyne makes things worse by turning the show into a kind a Disneyfied version of hippiedom. They give us clean, tidy teens out of some Gap commercial with multiple changes of funky clothes, not flea-bitten kids living rough who’ve gone back to nature.
McKnight and Burthwright give powerful performances both vocally and dramatically, and Andrew Kushnir has fine comic turn as Woof. They stand out in this strictly hit-and-miss production that owes more in style and attitude to <i>Austin Powers</i> than any true feelings of commitment, nonconformism or outrage.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2006-04-06.
Photo: Jamie McKnight (centre). ©Stephen Hues.
<b>2006-04-06</b>
<b>Hair</b>