[2 articles]
New 'Hair' tour makes first stop at Shubert Friday
http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/16/entertainment/doc4cba5d85515ba543314519.txt
October 16, 2010
By Donna Doherty
[email protected]
NEW HAVEN The Age of Aquarius is about to dawn at the Shubert
Theater, Friday, as the brand-new national tour of the iconic musical
"Hair" opens its run here for four performances.
It's the second show in succession which has opted to use the Shubert
to "build" its tour, which means the cast finishes its rehearsals,
tech and staging of the show. In fact, they arrived here Saturday and
today move into the theater.
Diane Paulus, the Tony Award-nominated director of this 2009 Broadway
revival of "Hair," is directing what she called "the best of
companies" for this tour original members from the Broadway cast,
the London show, members who joined the New York show last year and
some fresh faces as well "so we're putting the show together in the best way.
"New Haven is like a bonding of the show for this cast," said Paulus
by phone from New York during a rehearsal break.
The counterculture classic, which opened on Broadway in 1968, shocked
audiences with its language, nudity and in living up to its tagline
of "The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical."
It broke barriers in both music and in what would now be called
interactive theater, with actors bounding into the audience, up the
aisles and bringing them on stage.
"It's so much about breaking the fourth wall and being in the
theater," says Paulus. "There's only so much you can do in a
rehearsal hall, because so much happens in the audience, in house
boxes and balconies. That's what happens (today) when we transfer to
New Haven to really complete the rehearsal period for the show and
really give birth to the show," she said.
"Hair" tells the story through some of theater's most well-known
songs "Let the Sunshine In," "Aquarius," "Hair", "Good Morning
Starshine" of Claude, Berger and Sheila and "the tribe" and their
search for peace and love during the turbulent Vietnam War era.
This revival was nominated for seven Tonys and took home the top one
for Best Musical Revival, along with Drama Desk, Drama League and
Outer Critics Circle awards for outstanding revival of a musical.
It presents challenges, for, as Paulus says, "This is not a show that
just exists within a set. Every theater is different. For this cast,
it's not going to be like any other tour. The cast steps out. There
are moments with the audience. ... It has to be the real moment for
this show to really reverberate and be in the moment. They're going
to have to be in the moment, because there's no past in this show."
Paulus, who was born in 1966, was a mere toddler when the show first
hit Broadway, but she's been cited for her care and compassion for
capturing the era.
She chalks that up to having two older siblings who were rocking the
fringe vests, singing in bands and "teaching me the lyrics to The
Beatles songs. I had my own little hippie family," she laughs.
She went on to become a political activist in her college years at
Harvard, where the New Yorker is now the artistic director of
Harvard's American Repertory Theater.
Paulus painstakingly went over the original book of the show, which
is set in 1967, to update it as well as streamline it. Today's
audiences, she says, are political in a different way, and
surprisingly, some lines that were removed for their datedness have
been returned.
"I worked very closely with (book and lyricist) Jim Rado to focus the
story," she says.
She reinstated some changes that were made under director Tom
O'Horgan when the show moved to Broadway from The Public Theater in 1968.
"There's a line in a protest with the mother saying, 'You don't
understand, you don't know the truth, what's really going on in Red
China.' That was cut. It's now been restored."
She clarified others, such as adding explanatory context when the men
talk about burning their draft cards.
Paulus says, "I think my interest in doing 'Hair' was to get inside
it, to present the show from the inside out. To do 'Hair' and bring
back this period, you have to fight against anything that's just
surface. The clothes, the tie-dyes, that's too easy to go to the
surface of it. My approach was to really understand, get into the
skin of these young people and understand the passion and terror and
jubilation to be a young person then, and know that you could make
changes in your country. You loved your country enough to make changes."
That philosophy, says Paulus, retains its relevance even today, with
groups such as the Tea Party protesters using very much the same
patriotic reproaches to government.
"The hippies loved the flag. At any rally, the American flag would be
hanging in a tree. They wore it on their clothes. The point was they
wanted to be clear they loved the values America stood for: liberty,
truth and freedom. You have Sheila singing 'I Believe in Love' and in
the middle she starts singing 'My Country Tis of Thee.'"
What Paulus loves most about "Hair" is that "Forty years later, it's
still moving. People come remembering the '60s, reflecting on the
country, how things changed. I actually think the tour is at a moment
that's a very strong moment for 'Hair' to be taken across America
because of the feeling in this country now.
"... People in their 50s come and are nostalgic, but so many young
people are coming and loving it, feeling it was created for them."
The cast will spend the week learning the ins and outs of the
Shubert, a theater in whose early years was the last preview stop for
Broadway-bound shows, and in this new theater world is proudly
embracing its role as the springboard for shows tour-bound from Broadway.
That lore is not lost on Paulus.
"I'm just so excited to be at the Shubert," she says. "There's so
much theater history at the Shubert. We're delighted to be in that
kid of historical theater and especially, when you think of what was
going on at Yale in the '60s and '70s."
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Contact Donna Doherty at 203-789-5672.
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IF YOU GO
Event: "Hair"
When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: Shubert Theater, 247 College St., New Haven
Tickets: $15-$75
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1960s love-rock musical 'Hair' at the Shubert
http://www.newstimes.com/default/article/1960s-love-rock-musical-Hair-at-the-Shubert-713680.php
Joe Meyers
October 19, 2010
The calendar is being turned back to 1968 at New Haven's Shubert
Theater this weekend, where a national tour of "Hair" is being launched.
The show about sexual freedom and political protest galvanized
Broadway 42 years ago with its frank talk, brief nudity and
rock-fueled song score.
Some critics saw it as the beginning of a fresh new musical era,
others feared the show was the death knell of the classic Broadway
sound of Richard Rodgers and Jerry Herman.
"Hair" was made into an unsuccessful Milos Forman movie in 1979 --
naysayers called it "dated" -- and an attempted stage revival in New
York around that time also failed.
But, during the summer of 2007, director Diane Paulus staged a
concert version of the show at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park
that became one of the hottest tickets in town.
The following summer, the New York Shakespeare Festival put on a full
production in the same venue with smashing results.
That production moved on to Broadway, where it ran for a year and won
the Tony Award for best revival of a musical.
A once "dated" musical struck a chord with both baby boomers who were
around in the 1960s and young people who could identify with the
show's anti-war, pro-personal freedom message.
The launch of the national tour of the "Hair" revival in New Haven
has meant a terrific opportunity for the historic theater and its
local stage crew, executive director John Fisher reported last week.
"It has kind of reinvented us a bit," Fisher said of the two weeks of
tech work that was done in advance of this weekend's public
performances to get the show ready to tour the nation.
The Shubert performed the same function for the "Chorus Line" tour
that was "built" at the New Haven facility last month.
"The theater is quite attractive to producers because of its
proximity to New York and the quality of our crew," Fisher pointed out.
The shows can't be put together in New York City, because Broadway
theaters are prohibitively expensive to book for private rehearsal
and tech time.
"Many of our crew members have worked on Broadway and national tours
which is very attractive to producers who are putting a new show
together," he added.
The trend started three years ago when the national tour of "Jersey
Boys" spent a month at the Shubert getting ready for the road.
The recent national tours of "Hairspray," "12 Angry Men" and "The 39
Steps" also began in New Haven.
Fisher said the resurgence of show creation at the Shubert is like a
throwback to the venue's glory days in the 1940s and 1950s, when
hundreds of new shows headed for Broadway began life in New Haven
("South Pacific" and "My Fair Lady" among them).
Having touring shows come together at the Shubert also benefits other
businesses in New Haven.
"You have upward of 80 people staying in hotels, eating at
restaurants," he said, adding that it was estimated that the "Jersey
Boys" tour rehearsals in New Haven added $1 million to the local economy.
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The Shubert Theater is at 247 College St., New Haven. Friday 8 p.m.;
Saturday 2, 8 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m. $15-$75. 800-228-6622. www.shubert.com.
.
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