Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: The Australian Production Of "Hair" Changed The Theatre And The Nation

June 01, 2014

The Australian Production Of "Hair" Changed The Theatre And The Nation

I was there, but not in Sydney. I really enjoyed it! I never owned the Australian cast LP, but I listened to the one above many, many times. I rescued it from my sister's collection which was about to be throw out so I still have it, and still listen to it.

YOU had to be there. And if you didn’t have a ticket, you had to hang about outside the Metro Theatre looking as if you did. And if you couldn’t get up to Kings Cross in that winter of 1969, you had to at least know someone who had seen Hair, the rock musical that defined a generation.

Almost half a century later, it is difficult to overstate the excitement with which Australians embraced this anti-Vietnam, anti-establishment, pro-love, pro-peace show.

It opened in Sydney on June 5, its much-touted, full-frontal nudity competing with a bomb scare that temporarily cleared the theatre of an A-list crowd that included entertainer Graham Kennedy — who did the right thing by leaping on stage for the finale.

Leaping on and off the stage was central to the Hair experience in those hippie, dippie days.
“I used to run along the back of the seats barefoot,” says Reg Livermore, who played the role of Berger. “I perfected the art. Or I would sit in someone’s lap. They probably remembered it all their life.”

What Livermore, now 75, remembers is the exhilaration of the show that transformed him from a traditional music-theatre performer to one of our most original players. He was 30 and somewhat sceptical about the brouhaha when he went along to a preview of Hair, to support his sister Helen, who was in the show.

“I was dumbfounded, knocked back on my heels,” he says. “I just knew that I had to be there, I had to be on that stage. I wasn’t particularly political but as a theatre animal, Hair represented change.”

Within months he was in the show and spent a total of more than two years performing across the country and in New Zealand.

In Melbourne this week, Livermore took time off from his gig in Wicked to visit the Palace Theatre — which, sadly, is set for demolition. In 1971, known as the Metro, it was the venue for Hair.

His success in the show catapulted Livermore into Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Show and his one-man shows Betty Blokk Buster and Wonder Woman.

“Hair was the right show at the right time,” he says. “It was talking to people and showing things to them that they didn’t have the courage to vocalise. They would go to the theatre (in those days) and see dining room comedies — all rather predictable.”

Hair was radically different and reviewers at the time suggested the Jim Sharman-directed Sydney version was far superior to the original New York production. It had been brought here by impresario Harry M. Miller but it was Sharman’s flair — using experimental filmmaker Albie Thoms and lighting by the collective Ubu — that set it apart.

In his 2012 memoir, Thoms wrote that he had been knocked back by the War Memorial in Canberra when he asked for some Vietnam War footage because it “might degrade the memory of those who fought”. But his 35mm handmade film of a simulated battle, along with other elements of the show, made a big impact on The Australian’s theatre critic, Ray Taylor: “I defy the most atrophied of conscience to get through the anti-war manifestation of Act Two without being shocked,” he wrote. ”How sick and confused our society: the censor wheezes over the innocent and sculptured beauty of the nude scene, while here true obscenity goes begging.”

The censor had been anxious, too, about the use of four-letter words but everyone calmed down when NSW chief secretary Eric Willis went along to a preview and said that while it was not his kind of show, it didn’t break any laws.

But Hair broke old ways of thinking.

“I think it changed my attitude to life,” says Marcia Hines. The Boston-born singer was only 16 when she crossed the globe, so young that Harry M was appointed her guardian. It was her big break but even more memorable because a few months later she announced she was pregnant. Her daughter, Deni, was born in September 1970, Hines leaving the theatre after the performance to go to hospital for the induced birth. Nine days later she was back on stage as part of the ensemble, known as “the tribe”.

“It wasn’t unusual. I was 17. Other girls (in the show) were doing it too, having babies. Harry M was so mad at us. Several of us became pregnant.”

Hines felt the anti-war message strongly —“We felt we were doing something really poignant, really important” — but says the musical is less relevant today.

“When I hear about people putting on Hair, now, I think, why?”

By Helen Trinca
Below: a picture of the Australian Cast Recording.

With thanks to The Australian

More information at Milesago

Reg Livermore also co - wrote "Ned Kelly" with Patrick Flynn.

Some of the performers on "Ned Kelly" were also in "Jesus Christ Superstar, for example Jon English, Trevor White, John Paul Young and Reg Livermore himself.