Although stacked with talented young singers, Kokandy Productions’ intense, committed new staging of the iconic 1968 musical “Hair” is not so much an exploration of the Age of Aquarius as a manifestation of an age of anxiety.
This is the least chill “Hair” I have ever seen. But that’s perhaps not so much a qualitative statement on an intriguing summer show at the Chopin Theatre, as a note on the state of the world as seen now by young artists.
The director and choreographer of the show, Brennan Urbi, notes in his biography that he prefers to “build a process specific to the questions and skill sets of the group.” I’m not sure where (or even if) being true to the material fits into that, but it perhaps explains why the show has been removed from its original 1960s milieu, which is difficult to pull off with so time-specific a piece, at least not without some kind of framing explanation. Certainly, Urbi and his young performers have found many useful parallels with the social protests of today (audience members are asked to write their own political slogans on the set with the provided markers). But there is no getting around the obsession of “Hair” with the Vietnam draft, especially in the second act, and so you are left wondering how all of that fits into a world where young progressive activists now generally leave military service out of the conversation.
But that’s not the biggest issue. The reason we all are still attracted to “Hair,” which is humorously subtitled “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” is its vision of mellow idealism, as expressed through the gorgeous music from Galt MacDermot, composed with one foot in folk and the other in funk. Plus a few toes dipped in acid rock.
So you get “Let the Sunshine In,” “Aquarius” and “Easy to Be Hard,” a trio of hippy-dippy, barefooted classics as well as “Black Boys” and “Walking in Space,” not to mention the more challenging “Colored Spade,” the performance of which here comes accompanied with printed words on a suddenly appearing cloth backdrop that reads, “This is a satire,” as if the show is worried that the audience won’t know.
If that is now a reasonable concern — and what do I know? perhaps it is — it surely says something troubling about the company’s lack of confidence in the progress of the world. I found that to be melancholy, as I did the production’s frequent unwillingness to chill out and luxuriate in this score. And don’t get me started on the decision to not let the reprise of “Let the Sunshine In” be an ode to the resilience and joy of youth, never mind adhere to the imperative of Broadway musicals to send the audience out feeling a little better about life, as lived imperfectly but together
Sex has mostly been shorn from a production that feels like several generations removed from the various Chicago stagings of this title, be they from the original “Hair” producer Michael Butler at the Athenaeum Theatre back in the 1990s (quite the 1996 be-in, I vividly recall) or director Rachel Rockwell’s deeply vulnerable staging for the Paramount Theatre in Aurora in 2012. Not only is there no nudity here, but it feels unimaginable and irrelevant in this particularly untrippy take. I didn’t believe for a second anyone found much spiritual solace in “Hare Krishna” or while “Walking in Space,” moments of Hakuna Matata which the production often views censoriously, it feels.
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At this point, a fair reader might be thinking that the reviewer of a certain age appears overly nostalgic for a lost era, and maybe even unwelcoming to the imperative that every company of actors find their way into an old show as a way of bringing it back to life. Guilty as charged, perhaps, although I’d add in my defense that “Hair” is more complex than merely a celebration of radicalism.
The book by Gerome Ragni and James Rado points out that Sheila, here beautifully sung by Catherine Rodríguez O’Connor, is most likely an NYU student trying on a persona that will not last and both Claude and Berger (played respectively by the talented duo of Gavin Rhys and Zac Richey) are not all they seem, to say the least.
At its core, “Hair” is about both the the pleasure of finding a like-minded community and its inevitable capacity to shatter the idealism it promised, but that requires more complicated and inter-connected journeys than we are shown here.
We see a world of intense individuals, for sure, but the majority look and feel to me like islands. These are substantial performances in a purposeful production, don’t get me wrong, but they have little room for play. And you still need a sense of humor to do a show with lyrics like “Glibby glub gloopy, Nibby nabby noopy, La la lo lo.”
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
Review: “Hair” (2.5 stars)
When: Through Sept. 13
Where: Kokandy Productions at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $55-66 at kokandyproductions.com