Review: Arts Express takes us to the hippie rich '60s in 'Hair'

‘”Hair” was a seminal rock musical when it debuted in the late 1960s.

But it’s probably more accurate to call it one of the first rock operas.

Characters in “Hair” have very few spoken lines; throughout the 2½-hour performance, the 16 actors on stage are mostly singing.

That’s a heavy lift for classically-trained vocalists, so you can only imagine how taxing it was for the young cast in Arts Express Theatre’s production.

On a sold-out opening night Friday, March 15, at its Park Place theater, voices on stage were mixed. There were a couple that were slightly off key, not hitting the highs or the lows in Galt MacDermot’s iconic soundtrack. But there also were several — soulful soprano Gabriella Carillo as Ronnie, the bright-voiced Isabel “Bella” Shea as Crissy, baritone Samuel Lewis as Hud— that were pretty terrific.

Where the vocal chops fell short, they made up for with solid acting in a play that forces the cast and the audience to abandon preconceived notions of polite society.

Directed by Nancy Davis Booth, “Hair” takes us to the center of the 1960s counterculture. The “Tribe,” a group of long-haired, drug-using free spirits who rage against the Vietnam War, environmental abuses and the government machine, are trying to persuade Claude (Jacob Conrad) to burn his draft card and join in their resistance.

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Booth did not sugarcoat playwrights Gerome Ragni and James Rado’s satirical commentary on the sexual revolution and hippie culture that defined the 1960s. Her version teeters somewhere between PG-13 and R for language, sexual innuendo, fleetingly brief nudity and drug use.

In other words, leave the kiddos and tweens at home for this one.

That becomes apparent from the second scene with Berger, the mischievous, free-spirited, drug-doling leader of the Tribe. Tommy Irish’s shirtless, almost Jeff Spicoli-esque— sans the ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High” surfer-dude persona — bounded on stage, tossing his long hair this way and that before gyrating suggestively and taking off his pants. Wearing just a loin cloth, he danced around the stage singing about searching for a teenage virgin named “Donna.”

Preston Hatch was wonderfully funny and deliciously flamboyant as Woof and Claude’s mother. A show-stealing scene of him lying on top of a poster of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and professing how he would love to sleep with him, but insisting he is not gay, was hilarious.

Conrad had a few funny moments, as well, including confronting his parents about his draft card and getting smacked on the backside by his dad. But Claude is the heart-tugger of the Tribe, and Conrad brought just enough humanity to the character to make him truly sympathetic.

The true test of the talent on stage came in the numerous ensemble performances, including the Be In chant of “Hare Krishna,” “Ain’t Got No,” the ubiquitous “Aquarius,” “Hair” and the finale, “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In).”

“Hair” repeats on weekends through March 30 at Arts Express Theatre, 5870 E. Broadway in Park Place. For tickets and showtimes, visit arts-express.org.