Hair (musical) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Reception to Hair upon its Broadway premiere was, with exceptions, overwhelmingly positive. Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times: "What is so likable about Hair...? I think it is simply that it is so likable. So new, so fresh, and so unassuming, even in its pretensions." John J. O'Connor of The Wall Street Journal said the show was "exuberantly defiant and the production explodes into every nook and cranny of the Biltmore Theater". Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Post wrote that "it has a surprising if perhaps unintentional charm, its high spirits are contagious, and its young zestfulness makes it difficult to resist."

Television reviews were even more enthusiastic. Allan Jeffreys of ABC said the actors were "the most talented hippies you'll ever see... directed in a wonderfully wild fashion by Tom O'Horgan." Leonard Probst of NBC said "Hair is the only new concept in musicals on Broadway in years and it's more fun than any other this season". John Wingate of WOR TV praised MacDermot's "dynamic score" that "blasts and soars", and Len Harris of CBS said "I've finally found the best musical of the Broadway season... it's that sloppy, vulgar, terrific tribal love rock musical Hair."

A reviewer from Variety, on the other hand, called the show "loony" and "without a story, form, music, dancing, beauty or artistry.... It's impossible to tell whether talent. Maybe talent is irrelevant in this new kind of show business." Reviews in the news weeklies were mixed; Jack Kroll in Newsweek wrote, "There is no denying the sheer kinetic drive of this new Hair... there is something hard, grabby, slightly corrupt about O'Horgan's virtuosity, like Busby Berkeley gone bitchy." But a reviewer from Time wrote that although the show "thrums with vitality crippled by being a bookless musical and, like a boneless fish, it drifts when it should swim."

Reviews were mixed when Hair opened in London. Irving Wardle in The Times wrote, "Its honesty and passion give it the quality of a true theatrical celebration – the joyous sound of a group of people telling the world exactly what they feel." In The Financial Times, B. A. Young agreed that Hair was "not only a wildly enjoyable evening, but a thoroughly moral one." However, in his final review before retiring after 48 years, 78-year-old W. A. Darlington of The Daily Telegraph wrote that he had "tried hard", but found the evening "a complete bore – noisy, ugly and quite desperately funny."

Acknowledging the show's critics, Scott Miller wrote in 2001 that "some people can't see past the appearance of chaos and randomness to the brilliant construction and sophisticated imagery underneath." Miller notes, "Not only did many of the lyrics not rhyme, but many of the songs didn't really have endings, just a slowing down and stopping, so the audience didn't know when to applaud.... The show rejected every convention of Broadway, of traditional theatre in general, and of the American musical in specific. And it was brilliant."