Broadway Features and Reviews
HAIR: The Broadway Hit Opens
By Broadway Magazine Staff
Let the sun shine in. Last night, Broadway welcomed the new revival of HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical. Today, the opening night critics have voiced their opinions of the production. A collective look at the reviews confirm that this revival is a tremendous success. Praise is given across the board to the cast, staging, and particularly the direction of Diane Paulus. The show moved to Broadway after a successful production this summer in Central Park. Multiple critics cite the youthful exuberance of the show as one of the keys to its success. Looks like this HAIR will run on Broadway for some years to come. A sampling of reviews below:
• This emotionally rich revival of "The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" from 1967 delivers what Broadway otherwise hasn't felt this season: the intense, unadulterated joy and anguish of that bi-polar state called youth.
-Ben Brantley, New York Times
• "Hair" was then and is now the most exciting new show in town, not so much a breath of spring air as a jolt of adrenaline.
-Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg
• But this Hair is more than the sum of its groovy, glorious parts. Anyone who can is advised to tune in and turn on, and be prepared for an exhilarating ride.
-Elysa Gardner, USA Today
• But in Broadway's Al Hirschfeld Theatre, where it officially opened last night, it felt canned. Sorry, that may sound more like a "Hairspray" pun, but it's the best word I can muster for this teased-up, overblown affair.
-Louise Kennedy, Boston Globe
• In the finale of the Broadway's exuberant revival of "Hair," the audience is invited to dance with the entire cast onstage. It is a communal celebratory conclusion to a theatrical experience you will not soon forget.
-Matt Windman, am New York
• Director Diane Paulus and her prodigiously talented cast connect with the material in ways that cut right to the 1967 rock musical's heart, generating tremendous energy that radiates to the rafters.
-David Rooney, Variety
• Director Diane Paulus has done an extraordinary job in illuminating these two conflicting ideas - the clash of spontaneity and the search for identity - ideas that pulse through much of the evening.
-Michael Kuchwara, AP
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