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.

Play Review: Spring Awakening

Do not see this piece of shit

A few months ago, someone had free tickets to see Spring Awakening on Broadway and invited me to go see it. I had heard amazing things about this play from everyone who went to see it, and I was really excited because Broadway rules, and although Les Miserables rules the hardest, other things can rule on Broadway too, such as The Secret Garden. So as my mom Rusty would say, I "went in with a good attitude" and was hoping to love it and braggg about my front row seats to others.

Unfortunately, the play was the worst piece of shit I have ever seen in my entire life. If you don't know the plot, it's essentially German school children in the late 1800s who have no idea about sex because everyone is repressed and they think about it and talk about it all day long and eventually two of them bone, one of them gets pregnant and I'm sure you can figure out the cornbag "tragic" ending. First of all, the entire cast was people who have literally just gone through puberty, so my first reaction was how do these people get to be in plays when I have to go to work. Second of all, it was "rock concert" style in that they'd whip out individual, hand held microphones from their 1800s nightgown rags and sing into them, and would often sit on the edge of the stage so I was literally sitting a foot away from an obese 13 year old boy who was in the play and I had to stare at my program and think of my grandmother dying in order to not burst out laughing.

In any event, the highlight of the show is that right before intermission, the sexification occurs, and the girl and the guy are suspended on giant flat swing, he rips open her shirt and you can see her miniscule boobs and the he pulls down his pants, so you can see his butt, and they pretend to have sex. At this point I nearly died of embarrassment, but my main question was if her boobs grow in real life will she kicked out of the play because she's supposed to be like 13. The girl who plays her is like 19 in real life, and I don't envy her because while I'm sure she's pumped that she gets to keep the part because she's completely flatchested, it sucks that she has to be flatchested in every day life, because while the play is temporary, breastaculars are forever.

Also, I just want to alert people to a new musical In the Heights which looks exactly like Rent 2: More AIDS and my advice would be to stay away from this musical because it will be ridiculous.