HAIR: Let the Sunshine In

54 minutes

Color

Jim Rado, Gerry Ragni and Galt MacDermot
Authors and Composer of HAIR
photo: www.dagmarfoto.com

HAIR is a remarkable phenomenon. It started with two unemployed actors, Gerome Ragni and James Rado, who put what they saw on the streets of New York's East Village into a play. The show hit the scene in 1967 with an initial success as the first production of Joe Papp's Public Theatre. Within a year, with Rado and Ragni starring in it, HAIR became a huge Broadway success, and a perfect microcosm of it time. It spread out across the country to over a dozen cities simultaneously, spreading the ideals of counter-culture youth to mainstream America. By 1972, HAIR had been performed in more than twenty productions around the world, and had been seen by 30 million people. Since then, it has had a profound influence socially and politically.

Rado and Ragni's stunning book for the musical addressed, in rapid-fire succession and with great humor, every issue on the table at the time, including the war in Vietnam and its protestors, civil rights and feminism, sex, obscenity and nudity, the generation gap, mind-expanding drugs and eastern spirituality. The documentary reveals the continuing relevance of the show and presents its still radical point of view.

HAIR authors Gerome Ragni and James Rado

photo: www.dagmarfoto.com

As the show reaches its fortieth anniversary, we meet author Jim Rado, whose life remains true to the principles of HAIR, going to anti-war rallies and be-ins. He continuously works on bringing HAIR back to the stage, and rehearses a troupe of young performers for a new production. Their vibrant energy brings HAIR's fantastic score to life once again. As the US is mired in a prolonged war in Iraq and military involvement elsewhere, HAIR is as relevant now as ever.

The film profiles many of the incredible talents that emerged from HAIR, and explores how the play has affected their lives. HAIR launched the careers of actors Keith Carradine, Melba Moore, Ben Vereen, Julien Clerc and Tim Curry, whom we see in informal interviews and in performance. Carradine in particular gives a stunning description of HAIR's importance vis-a–vis the war, then and now. There are accounts of the exhilaration as well as the tragedy that performers experienced in their connection with HAIR. Singer Jonathon Johnson's plunge into personal tragedy is the story of a hate-crime that outdoes the rest.

From the creative team, there are several other arresting characters in this documentary whose work remains forever associated with HAIR. They include composer Galt MacDermot, a most unexpected creative force in the musical. As Rado and Ragni's straight man, he composed anthems that came to represent the hippie movement. Tom O'Horgan, director of the original Broadway show, came from experimental theater, but had four major works on Broadway simultaneously. Michael Butler was called the "millionaire hippie" and was about to run for the Senate to represent the state of Illinois, when he was swept off his feet by the off-Broadway version and decided to take it to Broadway. His partner, the charming and witty Bertrand Castelli of France brought HAIR to the rest of the world. Filmmaker Milos Forman directed the movie version in 1979, that brought HAIR to a much wider audience in the US and internationally. Having come from Communist Czechoslovakia to New York to see HAIR for the first time off Broadway, he offers his fascinating take on the exhilarating sense of youthful freedom in HAIR.

HAIR new troupe rehearses

photo: John Mazlish

Finally, there is a central personality who is now missing: co-author and lyricist Gerome Ragni, who died at 48 in 1991. The film reveals Ragni's artistic talent, his supremely unconventional personality, and the depth of his friendship with collaborator Jim Rado. It was their intense and sometimes difficult collaboration that lay at the heart of their creation of HAIR, and it was their relationship that fueled its initial success as a play.

The film is full of the music of HAIR, with new and classic performances. A wealth of archival footage covers US and international productions with their original stars. Just as importantly, the archives convey the atmosphere of the times, contributing to the portrait of an era, a generation and its politics. Today, HAIR continues to inspire a new generation with its message of peace, love, anti-establishment disobedience and liberation. As author Jim Rado says, the urge for peace exists now as it did then, and their musical will inspire yet a new generation.