Hair (musical) Summary

Hair A new milestone in Broadway history was set in 1968 when Hair, the first rock musical, opened to mass popularity. Tackling controversial and explosive issues of the era in a theatrically innovati... Read more

Critical Essay by Clive Barnes If only good intentions were golden, "Hair" … would be great. As it is it is merely pretty good; an honest attempt to jolt the American musical int... Read more

Critical Essay by Theophilus Lewis [Hair] is a saturnalia in scatology that voices the revolt of the hippie generation, which rejects all traditional values of the social order, as well as the amenit... Read more

Critical Essay by Benedict Nightingale The beleaguered youth of Hair live precarious, vulnerable lives. If it isn't the fuzz, vindictively breaking up a harmless 'suck-in' on the... Read more

Critical Essay by Clive Barnes "Hair" is beautiful…. Nearly a year after the opening, the show has a kind of radiant freshness. It still seems as though the whole thing is swiftl... Read more

Critical Essay by John Rockwell Hair has been the most successful music drama of the decade, if not of the entire postwar era…. [It] has been exalted as a paean to the health and vitality of t... Read more

Critical Essay by David Ewen The psychedelic years of the late 1960's had a musical stage spokesman in Hair. The authors, Gerome Ragni and James Rado, have revealed that for two years they had... Read more

Critical Essay by Jonathan Swift "What a big put-on!" is the cynical reaction many of us have on first being exposed to Hair. A closer look, however, might cause a wary reevaluation, fo... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard Eder Nothing ages worse than graffiti. "Hair," the hippie musical, was a raffish slogan scrawled in day-glow upon the institutional walls of the late 1960�... Read more

Critical Essay by John Simon [When Hair! first appeared in 1967] it was carefree going indeed. True, there were weaknesses, but the show's flower children were in full bloom, the anti-war prot... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert Brustein The concept of a hippie musical with an electronic score is potentially very exciting, and I am convinced that the sound of rock—a sound that has developed re... Read more

Critical Essay by Gerald Weales What Hair has most to offer is the good-natured exuberance implicit in even the most ordinary rock music and embodied in the vitality of young performers. It has sever... Read more

Critical Essay by William Kloman "Hair" will be the "West Side Story" of the sixties. The difference between the two shows illustrates how far we've come in a decad... Read more