"Hair" by the Public Theatre in Central Park on August 16 in NY

I'm a huge fan of the movie "Hair" but I've never really taken the play seriously. I've credited my love of the movie to my love of the music, which I've always believed to be moving despite a fairly problematic script. I've also liked productions of the play but also found them problematic. They've always seemed like a hybrid between a concert and play. More of a conceit and less of a coherent play. And, again, it's mostly the music that I've found moving.

Turns out the the Public Theatre premiered "Hair" 40 years ago. Like "A Chorus Line," the play premiered at the Public and then went to Broadway. For its 40th anniversary, the theater included in its summer Shakespeare in the Park season with an electrifying production. It was very nearly flawless. This production was incredibly well-thought out. Meaning was wrung out of every lyric and every bit of dialogue and they were all organized into a coherent whole, something I've alays thought was impossible.

Leading the cast was Jonathan Groff, who played melancholy Melchor in "Spring Awakening." His performance as Claude had wonderful depth and integrity and he's an incredible singer. There are two other standouts. One is the woman who sang "Frank Mills" with wonderful vulnerability. Her voice is strong and sweet and by the time she gets to the end of the song, you know she's realized that Frank Mills is not coming back, not because he doesn't know where she is but because he doesn't care to. It's a sweetly sad moment. The other stand out is the guy who plays Woof, another fantastic actor and singer. The only disappointment, and it's not much of one, is Will Swenson who plays Berger. It's not that he's bad, it's just that he's not as strong as eveyone else.

I won't say much about the plot of "Hair" as we all already know the story. I will say that the second act is devasating. When the tribe goes to protest in front of the induction center, hoping to prevent Claude from showing up for the draft, they are frantic when they can't find him. Turns out that he's already inside and his fantasy about dodging the draft by becoming invisible has been transformed to mental illness from emotional strain and he comes to believe that he really is invisible. He goes off to war and, of course, is killed. At the end of the show, when the cast sings "let the sinshine in" it is a moving plead and a prayer to the audience to replace war with beauty and life. The woman who sanf "Frank Mills" weeps with pleading. As the cast leaves the stage, we're left with a dark and solitary image of Claude's corpse laying on an American flag.

But wait, there's more. The cast comes back for the curtain call with a refrain of "Let the Sunshine" and invites the audience up to the stage. Its meaning is transformed from a plea to end such violence to a celebration of life. The entire stage is packed with adience members, who are singing, dancing, jumping about, and hugging the cast members. The plea for life results in a manifestation of it in the theater. No one sitting in the seats leaves the theater until the very end. Instead, they sing at their seats (after all, it turns out we all know these songs and can sing along) while the others sing on stage. The show is transformed from an elegy to a celebration of life. I've never seen anything like it.