1st Night TV: Mackintosh Reveals His Hair Roots

Impresario Cameron Mackintosh let his Hair down big time last night (14 April 2010) at the star-studded opening for the Tony Award-winning Public Theater revival of the 1967 “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical”. Our TV partners at Reelkandi were there, too, to interview the impresario as well as cast and creatives behind this major Broadway transfer, which, in a West End first, arrives in London with its full 26-strong American company intact. They also caught up with some of the names from the original 1968 London production…

When Claude arrives in late 1960s New York City, he falls in with a group of hippies called the Tribe, led by Berger, who falls in love with rich girl Sheila. Their free love and drug-enhanced happiness is disrupted by Claude’s Vietnam draft orders. The musical has book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot. The score includes “Aquarius”, “Ain’t Got No”, “I Got Life”, “Good Morning Starshine” and “Let the Sun Shine In”.

In 1967, Hair was the show that officially opened the Public Theater’s long-time home on Lafayette Street in New York and has the distinction of being the first Off-Broadway show to transfer to Broadway, where it ran for 1,873 performances from April 1968. The musical had its West End premiere Shaftesbury Theatre in 1968, causing a sensation as the first musical (boasting a nude scene) to open after the abolition of British stage censorship care of the Lord Chamberlain.