[]

The Telegram

Toronto, Monday, January 12, 1970

 

OUR HAIR'S THE HAIRIEST HAIR YET

 

By Pat Annesley

Telegram Staff Reporter

 

It was one of those nights that wasn't supposed to happen, but it did.

 

Whoever heard of a theatrical opening on a Sunday night?  In Toronto.  In January.  When it's 20 degrees and snowing, and not a bar open in town.

 

Hair opened last night anyway.  This is the American tribal love rock musical that schedules its openings - 18 cities to date - according to the stars, and the stars said Jan. 11 in Toronto.  (The international Hair organization has its own astrologer.)

 

Hair opened.  And 1,496 people filled the Royal Alex to see it.  Nine hundred of them went to the big party afterwards thrown by the producers at the Royal York.  And the whole evening was an eye-popping, ear-popping, floor-thumping smash.

 

Hair opened.  And Clive Barnes, the theatre critic in North America, flew in from New York and said:  "I love it.  This is the best Hair I've seen, and I've seen it in London and Paris and New York.  This is the hairiest Hair Yet."

 

They flew in from Los Angeles, too.  And Las Vegas and Chicago and San Francisco.  And they said:  "Hey man, Toronto is great.  This is a swinging place you've got here."

 

Hair, as almost everyone in the hip opening-night crowd was aware, is a show that adapts itself to whatever city it's playing.  All the cast is always local, the 3 extra numbers and lines that are thrown in a production tend to have a local flavor, and the script and staging are so loose that it tends to come out a whole new Hair in every town.  That's the whole idea - a reflection of the way it is, with youth and the Establishment, music and love, and war and peace.  Here.

 

So the out-of-towners came and said:  "Wow."  And the Torontonians looked at one another and they said:  "Well, yes.  Come to think of it, Wow."

 

And Toronto's new image, the thing they're always writing about in the newspapers but nobody really believes, got a sudden, galvanized shot in the arm.  On a Sunday night, too.

 

Sure there were the ones at the party who said  "Great show yeah. But I gotta get out of here.  God, I need a drink."

 

But most of them stayed and stayed.  The producers had laid on a lavish buffet, an excellent rock band and soft drinks for all.  Coca-Cola everywhere and not a drop to drink.  And it mattered less and less as the night wore on: The crowd was high on Hair.

 

After that wild, pulsating show, it had to be a party where even the beautiful people forgot about their baubles and beads and lost themselves on the dance floor.  Silver heels fell off $40 shoes, and they laughed and danced in stocking feet.

 

Stars from the show joined in jamming with the band.  You couldn't find anybody you were looking for in the mob, and you didn't much care.  
And strangers hugged one another.

 

It was a night to remember, but nobody will remember much beyond the usual wing-ding kaleidoscope, little spots of color here and there.

 

Like the yellow Rolls-Royce parked in front of the theatre.  It was an old one, a dazzling museum piece.  Whose was it?  Would he get a ticket?  It was Gaston's, the guy who runs the restaurant on Markham St. with the great onion soup.  And he did.

 

So did the other Rolls a few yards up the street, a new white one.  So did the Jaguar sandwiched between them.  It seems the policeman was under pressure from a group of hapless diners at Ed's Warehouse, who chose last night for a quiet dinner out then couldn't get their cars out of the parking lot because the show had started and the crush was on.

 

(part missing)

 

The theatre itself was one of the stars of the night.  From the beginning the Hair people had said "this is our theatre," and if they could they'd move it brick by brick to Boston and all the other places where Hair is yet to come.

 

And what they did with that monument to Victorian opulence may have come as a shock to some of the Alex regulars, but it worked.  As they say in show business.

 

SEEN THROUGH

Then at the party, there was Gale Garnett, the female lead, in a flowing white see-through caftan that had every flashbulb in the place popping.

She was dancing with a little boy on her shoulders.

 

There was Tobi Lark, the sensational singer who was hurt onstage a couple of weeks ago, covering her tightly-bandaged leg with a shimmering Afro-robe and high-rising turban to match that she made herself.  Bandages or not, she was one of the first to leap up on the bandstand and get into the impromptu session.

 

There was the irrepressible Rudy Brown whose line "I feel good" never fails to break them up, gyrating across the room in a shiny Nehru suit.  And the tall African-looking dancer with his flowing headband, doing a real Watusi, looking as though his head was attached by a rubber band.  And all the beautiful young Hair girls in simple, bra-less splendor.

 

The beautiful people were outclassed but they didn't seem to mind.  It was the cast's night, and everybody gave it to them.  They won it.

 

A well-known promoter about town was heard to say:  "If Glen Warren (Glen Warren Productions of Toronto is co-producing the show with Michael Butler, head of the international Hair organization) wants to sell out half their action, I'll take it."

 

His companion's comment:  "Are you kidding?"

 

$7,000 PARTY

This is the most expensive Hair ever staged.  Up to last night it cost $260,000, including $7,000 for the party.  The costumes, props and lighting are far more elaborate than in other cities, and cost about double the tab for the New York production.

 

It is also the first theatrical production in Canada ever to get past $200,000 in advance bookings.  It passed that milestone while the show was still casting last fall, and the figure is now up around $500,000 and still climbing.

 

Businessmen kept talking about how "they're going to make a pile on this."

 

People in show business kept going back to the sets and the costumes, and how "they spent a pile on this."

 

And a man named Richard Osorio, who holds the title of El Cid in the peculiar nomenclature of the international Hair group, which means he's next down the line from number one Silver Indian Michael Butler, kept trying to figure out what was really special about this Toronto production.

 

Osorio travels the world seeing Hair productions, and the three best he's seen, he said are San Francisco, Chicago and Toronto.

 

San Francisco has this special "ensemble" character, where nobody's a star and the whole company "moves as one."  That's their thing.

 

Chicago is the gutsiest show going, where the cast has actually attacked the audience in its challenge to them to participate in the happening, to get with this coming age of Aquarius they're singing about.

 

"And Toronto...Toronto is somewhere in between.  When I first came here I thought this was the San Francisco of the north.  But really you're very conservative, like Chicago.  Yes the show says it for you: Toronto is a place where both kinds of people can live.  It's a groovy thing all its own.