CLEVELAND, Ohio - In the spring of 1971, "Hair" was still playing on Broadway. It was also at the Hanna Theatre in Playhouse Square, drawing protests and record crowds for its sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll ethos and its depiction of draft-dodging hippies at the height of the Vietnam War.
On the last day of a seven-week run, someone lobbed a bomb at the storied house, blessedly empty at the time. The blast knocked letters off the marquee -- only two "N's" in "HANNA" remained -- and shattered windows, but not the nerves of patrons. That night's closing performance boasted an almost full house.
The rock musical's premiere at the Beck Center for the Arts in 1996 inspired no such fireworks, nor has its revival there, featuring a pitch-perfect ensemble of 32 students from the Baldwin Wallace University Music Theatre Program.
Times and tastes have changed -- what was once shocking is now mainstream.
Pot is available by prescription. Beckham and Brady sport ponytails. Nobody is getting drafted anymore. We're still at war in Afghanistan, now the longest conflict in U.S. history, and soldiers are still dying, though only those with family members in harm's way seem to notice.
The nudity famously inserted into the Broadway production -- and ever-so-briefly at the Beck, where audiences are treated to a quick full moon -- now seems cute rather than cutting-edge. (In the off-Broadway world premiere at the Public Theater under the direction of Great Lakes Theater legend Gerald Freedman, actors stayed clothed.)
The current show, directed by BW's Victoria Bussert, has all the surface, sensory trappings that take us to a specific time and place. The smell of incense prickles the nose. Lava lamps glow in an onstage seating area, decked out with pillows, stage left.
A live band, conducted by Matthew Webb, is stationed stage right. A lone guitar plays the "Star-Spangled Banner" in the style of Jimi Hendrix, as actors file down the aisles. Berger (Jacob Slater), the leader of this merry band of hirsute, hard-bodied pranksters, panhandles a woman in the front row.
The action unfolds under an archway splattered and spackled with rainbow-colored graffiti by scenic designer Jordan Janota. We are in New York City, and it's 1968 -- "not 1948," as Claude (Chandler Smith), the middle-class kid from Flushing gone feral tells his square, disappointed parents.
Claude wants to be free -- of crew cuts and the conventions that would force him to marry the girl he knocked up and send him to Southeast Asia to die.
But as Berger and the others eagerly burn their draft cards in a trash barrel, Claude goes through "Hamlet"-like equivocations about whether he should take a Zippo to his. (Not everyone was lucky enough to have bone spurs.)
As in "A Chorus Line," characters take turns telling their stories and sharing their feelings in song, but with rare exceptions, the spotlight is on the boys, whose lives are on the line. (Olivia Kaufmann, as Berger's cast-off Sheila, adds a welcome female perspective -- and true pathos -- with "Easy to Be Hard.")
Voices are uniformly excellent and, in keeping with the male dominance that pervades the show, choreography by Martin Cespedes is pelvic-centric.
In addition to Berger and Claude, there is the ambiguously gay Woof (a sweet Sam Columbus) and Hud (a smoldering Warren Franklin), who provides the show's potent dose of Black Power.
All of this offers grist for those wanting to dismiss "Hair," and its free-love, fringe-vest freakiness, as nothing more than a period piece.
Beyond skillful, high energy performances of numbers we can all mouth the words to -- "Aquarius," "Good Morning Starshine," "Let the Sunshine In" -- why stage the 50-year-old musical at all?
Veronica Otim (center) and Tribe in the Beck's production of "Hair." The rock musical opened on Broadway in April 1968, running until July 1972.
Bussert's canny production provides the best argument to date that "Hair" is no mere time-capsule relic. It still has a lot to say -- about youth as the engine of cultural change and our rich history of protest, the kind you do in the streets and in the theater, too.
She wastes no time mining those core messages with the help of Kasumi, an artist whose experimental films, electronic installations and virtual-reality pieces have been incorporated into performances ranging from the New York Philharmonic to Grandmaster Flash.
On a screen suspended above a large, round dais -- a shape that evokes everything from the sun and the moon to an astrological wheel -- we see vintage footage of Vietnam-era and civil rights rallies, images that blur and fade into crowds holding signs that read "Black Lives Matter." With that, Kasumi creates the feeling of instant time travel, knitting the "then" with the "now."
The mesmerizing video art -- moving collages that pull visuals from film, commercials, news reels and other cultural detritus -- augments and amplifies the familiar musical numbers.
Textbook-like drawings of human bodies are invaded by animated pollutants from smokestacks in "Air," sung by the irresistible MacKenzie Wright, who sounds a lot like Annie Potts, as the very pregnant Jeanie.
The cry for a cleaner, safer environment, poignantly, from a mother-to-be, is more relevant than ever on our warming planet.
Welcome! Sulphur dioxide
Hello! Carbon monoxide
The air, the air
Is everywhere
Breathe deep, while you sleep
Breathe deep
Other visuals are more provocative still, as in-your-face as the original production once was to the Eisenhower crowd. Kids stare into a 1950s TV set watching an old radio tower broadcasting the word "Lies." Animated cutouts of Donald Trump appearing on "Fixed News" (and decrying "Fake News") dance jerkily across the screen.
No one should be surprised that a show born to challenge Establishment values in 1968 would have the audacity to do the same in 2018.
Half a century ago, "Hair," with its unequivocal anti-war message, took a stand against the policies of the American government. And Bussert's college-age cast has issues with this White House, too, delivering the show's most thrilling onstage rebellion with "Ain't Got No."
"I'm in-vi-si-ble," the first stanza of the timeless anthem of generational alienation goes. Then, the tribe of outcasts and social misfits enumerate the things -- including political power -- they lack.
Ain't got no home, ain't got no shoes, ain't got no money
Ain't got no class, ain't got no scarf, ain't got no gloves
Ain't got no bed, ain't got no pot, ain't got no faith ...
As they sing, they scrawl slogans on poster board, then tote the signs above their heads and march into the audience. The messages change from performance to performance -- what they write is up to them. Their raw, uncensored statements serve to connect the demonstrations of the past to those of the present with even more urgency than Kasumi's imagery does:
Gay Rights are Human Rights
My P---y Grabs Back
Build Kindness Not Walls
"Hair" is the voice of youth, rising up in protest, refusing to be silent, refusing to accept what it deems unacceptable. That's a quintessentially American song, a melody we should never tire of hearing.
REVIEW
Hair
What: A Beck Center for the Arts production of the American Tribal Love Rock Musical. Music by Galt MacDermot. Book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado. Musical direction by Matthew Webb. Choreography by Martin Cespedes. Directed by Victoria Bussert.
When: Through Sunday, Feb. 25.
Where: The Beck's Mackey Main Stage, 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood.
Tickets: $12-$31. Go to beckcenter.org or call 216-521-2540, ext.10.
Approximate running time: 2 hours and 15 minutes, including one intermission.