By Michele Markarian
“Hair” – Book and Lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni. Music by Galt MacDermont. Directed by Joey C. Pelletier. Presented by Heart and Dagger Productions at Club Café, 209 Columbus Avenue, Boston, through October 20.
I was a little kid when my parents bought the album of the original Broadway cast of “Hair”, after they’d gone to New York to see it. I thought the music was contagious and would sing along to the soundtrack. My naïve mother didn’t know the meaning of the words in “Sodomy” any more than I did, so the singing worked out nicely. Years later, I found a book in our local library by original cast member Lorrie Davis, called “Letting Down My Hair: Two Years With the Love Rock Tribe–From Dawning to Downing of Aquarius”. Fans of “Hair”, this book is not to be missed! ($30 used on Amazon.) I read and reread it cover to cover until my mother, who had wised up by then, got her hands on it and declared it “filthy”. Years later, as a young theater reviewer in college, I volunteered to see a Brown University production of “Hair”. The show itself was excellent, but I was disappointed to experience it as a piece of history, rather than something relevant to the times.
