Lambertville, NJ
30 May 2025
Opening Night
This production nailed it.
The cast was made up of almost entirely young actors; the youngest seemingly having just graduated high school. However, they are an impressive bunch and vocally, these actors are a powerhouse. Special shoutout to Trinity Anjelic (playing Dionne), Sarah Harrison (playing Jeanie), Anastasia Durand (playing Sheila Franklin), Matt Keelan (playing Woof), Alexander Minter (playing Margaret Mead), and Sol Siedell (playing a member of the Tribe) for their stand out vocal abilities. In a show where all of the actors are good singers, those listed above took it an extra notch up.
The script of Hair has gone through numerous rewrites and revisions, so it was not a huge surprise to hear a few songs that I wasn’t familiar with. Most notably these were the songs “The Stone Age”, “Oh Great God of Power”, and “Eyes Look Your Last”. Most notably missing from the score I am used to was the song “The Bed”. The addition of these songs did not take away anything from the show. In fact, it added an element that I had never seen before — they stress that the character of Claude (played by Soren Madsen) is the Aquarius bringing on the Age of Aquarius. This added religious element to the show: Claude is representative of Jesus and his story line makes him a martyr for his ideals and beliefs. I have to conclude that all of the choreography in which Claude was standing with his arms stretched out to his sides, reminiscent of Jesus on the cross, was intentional.
I very much appreciated the staging for the song “What a Piece of Work is Man”. This is the first time that I have seen this song sung quite literally overtop the actors that just seconds ago were writhing with agony while singing about being blown apart from metal explosions and shrapnel and then lying deadly still on the stage. Cue “What a Piece of Work is Man” and you can feel the utter disgust and disdain as the actors sing out Hamlet’s famous soliloquy that their characters feel at seeing such death and destruction at the hands of their fellow men.
As for the famous “naked scene”. People blow this out of proportion all the time. In this production, the actors begin to undress under dim light, and within seconds really, the actors on stage are in an almost complete blackout. I actually would have liked to have seen the actors back lit for an additional beat or two before the blackout. This is simply to make the effect of the characters appearing in a silhouette last just a bit longer. Right before the blackout, the actors all appeared as nameless, featureless, human bodies. The actors being in various stage of undress made no difference. It was seeing them all be nothing more than bodies and unfortunately I think that effect would have had a greater impact if just held for slightly longer. Let the audience really soak up the vulnerability that nakedness represents before making it clear that those soldiers aren’t going to come back.
This theatre does not use a live orchestra and instead rely on a track that the actors sing to. This is typically not a problem at all, however, it does run the risk of the audience reacting to a song or a scene for longer than is anticipated by the production team. This happened a time or two during this show where the audience continued cheer or laugh and an actor attempted to wait for the noise to die down before saying their line. However, that would cause the next actor to rush their line so that the singing cues were hit on time.
This production felt fairly seamless in its transitions between scenes. I appreciate that the entire theatre was used for this show considering how often the fourth wall is able to be broken throughout. But more importantly, I was able to feel the emotions of the various characters. Whether it be Jeanie wordlessly realising what was happening when Claude says goodbye at the “Be-In” or Claude lamenting on his common, regular existence and his dreams of greatness.
I really appreciated the character of Claude attempting to find strength in his invisibility. Claude is a dreamer, full of hope, who wants to make change in the world. For the majority of the show, he is a nobody and he goes so far as to describe himself as “invisible” early on. So it was interesting to see him take that negative and attempt to use it as a positive.
Of course, fans of the show know how that ultimately works out for him. And then the audience is left with a long lasting gut punch and we are left to ponder “why can’t we just love”?