IT’S probably been a few years – OK, decades – since you’ve participated in a Be-In in Central Park, but you’re in luck: “Hair” is back.
The rousing revival that opened last night at the Delacorte – 40 years after it first played the Public Theater – feels as fresh now as it did then, thanks to the sheer energy of its sexy young ensemble.
That it happens to be about a grossly unpopular war only makes Gerome Ragni and James Rado’s book more relevant than it was the last time it was revived, a decade after its premiere.
Granted, the plot – revolving around the imminent Army induction of Claude Bukowski (Jonathan Groff) and the romantic entanglements of the hippie tribe with which he aligns – is as thin as ever. But it hardly matters, thanks to Galt MacDermot’s driving rock/pop score, spectacularly performed here.
Diane Paulus’ staging (a fleshed-out production of her concert version of it last fall) wisely doesn’t try to update or gimmick up the proceedings, which play out on Scott Pask’s simple set: a patchy lawn, a fence and a few garbage cans.
From the opening strains of “Aquarius” to the final cries of “Let the Sunshine In,” the music soars, sung with passionate conviction. The women in particular shine in such gorgeous numbers as “Frank Mills” (Allison Case) and “Easy To Be Hard” (Caren Lyn Manuel).
Groff, late of “Spring Awakening,” makes an appealing Claude, who lives with his parents in Flushing, Queens, but prefers to pretend he’s from Manchester, England. Even better is Will Swenson as Berger, the tribe’s leader, whose six-pack abs and sweaty charisma had women (and more than a few men) swooning.
The proceedings threaten to bog down at times, especially in the lengthy Act 2 sequence in which Claude trips out. But Karole Armitage’s Dionysian-like choreography more than compensates. And the spectacular curtain call, in which the cast pulls the audience onstage for a raucous dance party, shows just how desperate New Yorkers are to let their “Hair” down.
HAIR
Delacorte Theater, Central Park; (212) 539-8750. Through Aug. 31.