Play Review: Hair

Yesterday, my family went to see Hair the musical on Broadway, not to be confirmed with Hairspray, the other musical on Broadway. Hair is the one where people are hippies, and Hairspray is the one where people are fat and do the twist. In any event, I had never seen Hair before, but I went in with as open a mind as I could which is saying a lot, considering that it was a) a musical not named Les Miserables and b) it was a musical.

The show was fine, meaning I thought the acting and singing weregood despite the corny nature of the entire situation, but the main problem with the show was that the actors KEPT ON COMING INTO THE AUDIENCE and singing and touching people. They entered the audience at least seven times and were looking at people there and made jokes about people sitting in the front row. This resulted in me having a goddamn panic attack the entire time that someone was going to come near me or touch me while singing, but thankfully I was sitting in the middle of the row and therefore relatively safe from having to be touched or looked at by an actor, because if I had been sitting on the aisle like my dad and someone in a '70s costume so much as looked at me, I would have immediately slit my wrists with the playbill and then shot myself.

I'm sorry but the WHOLE POINT of plays is that the actors are supposed to remain on the stage, and you're supposed to be in the audience making snide remarks about the show, and the two are not supposed to acknowledge each other until the bows at the end. Here, it was like they were trying to involve the audience IN the play so I was spent the entire time terrified of checking my blackberry for fear that some actor would see me doing it and make a scene. The worst part was at the end, when they're doing like an extended megamix of the song "Hair," the actors actually GO INTO THE ORCHESTRA AND PULL THE FIRST TEN ROWS OF PEOPLE ON STAGE TO DANCE. In fact, my dad saw one of the guys that goes to his gym dancing on stage and suggested we get his autograph.

The point is that when they sell tickets to any show they need to warn people about the danger zones for likely participation. When people fly they have the choice not to sit in the emergency exit seats if they don't feel comfortable being the last ones out of the plane when it crashes, and Broadway needs to get wise to the fact that most theatergoers are VERY UNCOMFORTABLE interacting with people singing in costumes and want to be assured when purchasing tickets they will not be touched or looked at by these people during the show.

Oscars Analysis: Part I

Dog necklaces = very good idea

I normally maintain a strict policy against watching the Oscars, a) because superior shows such as Rock of Love Bus and The Amazing Race are on at that time, and b) watching celebrities praise each other repeatedly and then get awards for spending 6 weeks out of the year working and making millions of dollars grows a little tiresome after the third hour or so. In any event, I ended up watching part of it this year because Megan gchatted me that Mickey Rourke was wearing a choker necklace with a picture of his dog Loki who died last Monday encased in glass, and I wanted to show my support for that necklace and also for people who thank their dogs in their speeches, which is appropriate and key. Maybe I just haven't been paying close attention for the past several years, but this year the Oscar lunacy was out of control.

First of all, the song and dance number with Hugh Jackman and Beyonce was so embarrassing I had to turn off my tv and hide my face in a pillow. Under no circumstances is it acceptable to break into song while in the middle of talking (with the sole exception being Les Miserables which is VERY acceptable), and if by some chance it was acceptable, the most immediate way to make it as unacceptable as possible is to include top hats, canes, red ice dancer costumes, tuxedos and medleys featuring olde tyme songs such as Singing in the Rain. The sheer absurdity of Queen Latifah who USED TO BE A RAPPER singing "I'll Be Seeing You" over a montage of dead actors was literally too much to bear.

Second of all, this year, it seems they instituted a new format for the Best Actor/Best Actress categories, whereby past winners had to stand up on stage and deliver the most overwrought, hyperbolic monologues known to mankind, thereby embarrassing themselves and the nominee. Everyone talked about how "fearless" and "courageous" the nominees were, like they were animal tamers in a zoo and not movie actors. Meanwhile, the person being nominated had to sit there, look wistful and hold back tears and then at the end of the speech mouth ridiculous things like "I love you" and "thank you so much" to the presenters. And yet, during all of this, no one seemed to notice that Sophia Loren was standing on stage despite the fact that she appears to have been dead for three years. Now I finally understand that when CNN and all the corny news sources refers to her as a "timeless beauty," they are merely referring to the fact that she has been taxidermied and makes Weekend at Bernie's appearances occasionally.

P.S. Upon enlarging the Mickey Rourke photo, it appears that he also has a diamond encrusted pin of another dog. This pin is also acceptable.