From the archive, 12 September 1968: Nudity in Hair only brief, says director

"Hair," the Broadway musical about hippies and other young creatures, is now in rehearsal in London, where it will open at the Shaftesbury Theatre on September 27. The American director, Mr Tom O'Horgan, is patient with reporters but a bit sick of explaining why some of the cast take off all their clothes at the end of act one.

When he came through immigration at London Airport they asked him what was he going to do, and he said, "Direct a play." They asked which one, and he told them, and they said, "Oh, that was the one where you didn't need a wardrobe mistress."

Yesterday Mr O'Horgan said really it was a very small part of the play. The scene was at a be-in, and the actors and actresses undressed underneath a large blanket and then just stood up naked for a few moments. It was a celebration of freedom, a casting off of false values. He said it was short, beautiful, and unsexy.

Only those members of the company undressed who wished to do so that night. The play opened on Broadway on the spring, and generally five or ten of the 26 actors and actresses undressed any one night.

In rehearsal, the musical appears to be a satirical morality play, a bit noisy, of the kind familiar to anyone who saw the American La Mama Troupe last year. It is very lively, and the girls are very pretty and very young.

A Negress recites the Gettysburg Address while her shoes are cleaned by a white girl, who uses her hair as a brush. While the whole stage is filled with slaughtered corpses, two men, one black,one white, recite "What a piece of work is man," and so on.

"Hair" looks rather sweet. The title means nothing sinister, and refers only to the long hair preferred by young people. Mr O'Horgan says the play is a "complete geography of the kids," which neither approves nor disapproves but "tells it like it is."

A few charges have been made for the English audience. On Broadway a young man goes on stage pushing reefer cigarettes and says, "I got my job through the 'Village Voice'." At yesterday's rehearsal he said, "I got my job through the 'Evening Standard'."

[Read an extract from the Guardian's 1968 review of Hair here]