Every two weeks or so, TC makes a limited number of discounted tickets to a particular Broadway show available to students. I didn't see the first few ("Westside Story": seen it; "Wicked": not really interested; "In the Heights": huh?) but when I saw posters for tickets to "Hair," I was one of the first in line. My friends Crystal and Jacqui and I went to see it together on a Sunday afternoon.
I had seen the movie, and although Eddie warned me that the musical is quite different, I hadn't expected it to be SO different. Even going into it with background knowledge, I still had trouble following the plot, which wasn't really introduced until there had been about 20 minutes worth of scene-establishing songs and developed very slowly over the next hour and a half. I liked the movie's interpretation better because it was easier to follow (which indicates, I guess, that I am bound by the rigid structures imposed upon me by The Man and therefore learned nothing from "Hair").
That said, I loved it. The music has been running through my head continuously since then and has yet to get annoying. Not only was the music played live, the musicians were actually on the stage in front of the backdrop. Some of them were even perched on an antique pick-up truck-turned-stage. The actors were all young and energetic and startlingly talented. They used not only the surface of the stage as a performance space but the aisles as well, even up in the nosebleed section where we frugal TC theatergoers were sequestered. They handed out flowers and danced with audience members. At the end of the show, the audience was encouraged to come up onto the stage and dance with the cast.
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