The producers of the Public Theater’s loving revival of Hair in Central Park have put aside the reality that most of us recall not the original (and far less linear) 1968 Broadway production, but instead the lean, fun 1979 Milos Forman film adaptation. I left the Delacorte Theater last Saturday night with renewed respect for the Czech movie director who took the Broadway version and re-fashioned it into a tight, endearing movie musical, mostly by cutting songs that stretched out the simple story into an epic rock-opera of emotional uplift.  But by the end of a long night at the Delacorte–one that included actors roaming the aisles for loose change, waving their hair in people’s faces and, at the end, inviting the audience onstage to boogie–I had given in, like everyone else, to the intoxicating power of a natural high. 

There’s really not much point denying the power of the dozen or so songs that make Hair a classic: this production offers near-perfect renditions of “Aquarius,” “Let The Sun Shine In,” “Where Do I Go?” and “Hair” –along with one song wrongly cut from the movie, the spectacular and haunting “Frank Mills.” It’s fun to watch well-trained actors bring to life lyrics imbedded in your brain, and hear melodies that soar; it’s a musical score as good as any ever performed on a Broadway stage, with endlessly brilliant, hilarious lyrics. And the cast assembled to stage for this production has the looks and talent to keep even the most hardened cynic mesmerized. The first act takes off so fast, and forges such a strong emotional connection with an audience who has long ago memorized the melodies, that it’s nearly impossible to let go of its pull.

And yet, to my surprise, boredom sets in quickly after intermission, when an epic hallucination sequence–wisely trimmed in the movie–strings together several songs that stop the show’s heart-stopping pleasures dead in its tracks. It’s no creative crisis–this production will move to Broadway and collect tons of awards, have no doubt–but would it have hurt the cause to cut judiciously from a show with more than two dozen songs and multiple reprises? With so many back-to-back pleasures in Hair, it seemed indulgent to restore every melody removed by Forman in his equally moving interpretation. 

This is a minor quibble with Hair, a long-overdue and mostly-inspired answer to the prayers of those who stand for hours every summer in the hopes of a wonderful bargain in a spectacular setting–and frequently end up disappointed. I loved the performance of Jonathan Groff as Claude Hooper Bukowski; even though I preferred the character’s hick-to-hippie transformation added to Hair by the movie’s screenwriter, Michael Weller, Groff managed to make sense of the original, muddled conception of Claude as a hippie to begin with.  

The point of a nostalgia trip like this is to restore sensations lost or forgotten over time, and even this flawed production succeeds on that level, especially if you’re the type to enjoy making googly eyes with actors when they come visit you at your seat. I’m not, but this show succeeds at making a human connection in other ways, most of them musical. And the epic, thrilling rendition of “Let The Sun Shine In” at the curtain call gives the audience time to revel privately in whatever pleasures they associate with those bygone days–and to enjoy the chance to sing along with the gifted, gorgeous cast under the spell of an August moon. It’s enough to justify the indulgence of brilliant artists who should have known better than to reject some shrewd, delicate editing of their timeless masterpiece.
 



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The Nation magazine has just sent out a press release touting a "new sex column" to appear in the magazine beginning next month.  The magazine is calling the column "Carnal Knowledge," an extremely witty spin on the title of the 1971 movie, "Carnal Knowledge." The column will be written by JoAnn Wypijewski (pictured left), whose sex column credentials include years of freelancing for Mother Jones, Legal Affairs and New Labor Forum.
 
"The path [Wypijewski] sets here will hardly be straight or narrow, but rather full of zigs and zags and surprises," says The Nation's editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, "like politics, like sex, like life." And, of course, like The Nation, a magazine long noted for its erotic coverage of issues like immigration, labor relations and bloated defense contracts.
 
In her first column, Wypijewski explores the sexual appeal of Barack and Michelle Obama. "In politics as in pop, legions of little girls jumping out of their panties can't be wrong," she writes, according to The Nation's news release. However, the news release fails to make clear what the hell Wypijewski is talking about.



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...in its obituary this morning of Claus Luthe, the German car designer responsible for the sleek BMW models of the 1980s that influenced American car design. 

In the 13th (and next to last) paragraph of the obituary, Dennis Hevesi reports:  "In 1990, after 14 years at BMW, Mr. Luthe’s career came to an unfortunate end. He was convicted of murder after stabbing his often-troubled 33-year-old son, Ulrich, to death during a violent argument. He was sentenced to 33 months in prison, but did not serve his full term."

My gosh, yes, what an unfortunate end to Ulrich's career!   

This obituary must be comforting news to successful people everywhere who, unfortunately for their career, may have also murdered their children.  They no longer have to fear that their criminal acts will detract from a generally laudatory obituary in The New York Times.  

 


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It saddens me to report that the price of a banana from my corner fruit dealer at 28th Street and Fifth Avenue rose this week by 40 percent.  At least I think it's 40 percent; ratios aren't my specialty.  Anyway, he's charging 35 cents per perfect yellow banana, which is a dime more than he charged last week.  I tried to explain to my dealer that purveyors of certain necessities, like bananas and bubble gum and psychotherapy, should not be allowed to raise prices so rapidly that consumers must consider a lifestyle change according to someone's capricious whim.  He nodded, and just kept repeating: "Thirty-five cents.  Thirty-five cents. Thirty-five cents."  


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In the current issue of The New Yorker, Janet Malcolm describes the Gossip Girl novels as a "Waughish achievement."  Like, seriously. Somehow the 74-year-old New Yorker critic at large, better known for her dessications of Joe McGinniss in The Journalist and the Murderer and of archivist Jeffrey Masson in In The Freud Archives, has chosen to turn her laser-beam analytical eye on the books that became the basis of the hit teen series on the CW network.

Children are a pleasure-seeking species, Malcolm reports, accurately enough, although her thesis – that the “tour de force” novels by Cecily von Ziegesar have been translated into “sluggish and crass” television episodes – may not find many children in agreement.  Still, how can you not read this?  Janet Malcolm on Gossip Girl – come on, that's sick!

Read Malcolm's essay here.

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“That’s my job,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg says to the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, as they bemoan the possibility that an uncontrollable force (the weather) might undermine their massive Central Park art installation, The Gates. It’s one of many priceless found moments in The Gates, an HBO documentary (debuting tonight, Feb. 26) credited to four directors—among them a Maysles brother who has been dead for two decades – and rightly so. An epic work like The Gates deserved nothing less than the artistry of the Maysles to capture its tortuous path to completion in the winter of 2005. And the end result is a classic narrative, with the typical and stunning simplicity that has marked the Maysles brothers’ work since the 1960s.

As always with great achievements, luck has played a pivotal role. The directors had access, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to the original battle over the prospect of The Gates, and the resulting footage catches the absurdist debate among the city’s liberal leaders over whether the Christo vision would violate the artistry of Central Park. “It’s like painting over a Michelangelo,” one arts patron sniffs, only to be laughed at later by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who saw Central Park as the ultimate canvas for their saffron flags.

Sadly for the filmmakers—but fortunately for New Yorkers themselves—a two-decade leap forward in time results in a more accepting city ready to embrace Christo’s vision. The story devolves into a straightforward deconstruction of the work itself; we watch the painstaking preparations, the installation itself, and the impact of its extravagant beauty on those who spent hours wandering the park’s pathways for a taste. The questioning and the doubts that fueled the film’s opening fades away, and with it its energy.

In the end, a two-dimensional film fails to capture the epic grace of The Gates and the feelings it left behind. But it does have the sense not to focus endlessly on flapping winds and beauty shots; it delivers, instead, on the human dimension—catching the arrogance that drives Christo and Jeanne-Claude to see their artistry in such epic proportions. They act as though it makes perfect sense that the greatest city in the world should give over its showcase setting for an expression of their own, singular vision. But it’s exactly that sort of audacity that led to Central Park itself, wasn’t it? New York was built on the dreams of men and women who see things in grand scale, and with the confidence to succeed. That, too, is what made the Maysles Brothers a brand of filmmaking like no other—and this, their last collaboration, is a memorable monument to their gifts.




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