I remember listening to a radio reading of the play when I was 11 or 12 years old; early 70's. Not long after that, I got the record album of the original. Compared to the movie, it was truly rebellious and touched upon some 'forbidden' subjects that Hollywood still downplays and stereotypes; trannies, draft-card burners, college students who are vocally in opposition with the politics of the day and those who are in power, and the list goes further. The stage version doesn't portray Claude as a ridiculously naive Okie, but as a young draftie of the US Army who feels unsettled and is wavering in thought about what he's going to do with his life. Sheila isn't some aloof blue-blood snob who's never been exposed to the rebellion that was building up in the 1960's. And Berger wasn't the absolute KING of the nowhere druggies in Central Park. Although Cheryl Barnes was a godsend to the movie with her mind-numbing performance of "Easy to Be Hard"; in the play, Hud didn't ditch his pregnant fiancée to go live in the streets with those - commune-like, free loving, drug experimenting, believers in freedom of speech, anti-war protesters - . The movie backed away from the original play where the orgy was concerned and the ending of the movie was so altered from the play, that I have trouble relating the plots. The unspoken leader, Berger, takes the place of Claude and goes to die in Vietnam. The movie was fun to watch, with the dancing and the songs, but it's plot is so sanitized in relation to the political world of the '60's and early '70's anti-war movement, that it almost looks like censorship. The fact that it avoids sexuality is also a major departure from the theme of the original play. I liked the movie somewhat, but it's not the "Hair" I remember.
Review of Hair
