The musical Hair has a privileged place in American culture. Its songs, particularly classics like “Aquarius,” “Good Morning Starshine,” and “Let the Sun Shine In,” are deeply familiar, an inescapable part of the soundtrack of American life in the second half of the twentieth century. Lots of people have seen Milos Forman’s 1979 filmed version. How many, though, have seen the musical itself? It opened at the Public Theater in 1967, subsequently moving to Broadway’s Biltmore Theater where it played for four years; therefore only people well launched in middle age, at the very least, can have seen the original production; regional, stock, and amateur productions are few and far between. We know Hair more as what we think it stands for—peace, love, joy, free love—than for the darker and more disturbing drama it actually presents.

Seeing the full-scale revival at the Delacorte in Central Park, I was taken aback by what a strong, expert, powerful show Hair turns out to be. All its fine qualities have been heightened by Diane Paulus’s staging, and as a matter of fact this is the best production I have ever seen at the Delacorte in more than thirty years of attending Shakespeare in the Park. Joseph Papp’s conception of his summer festival as a democratic, anti-elitist institution has all too often extended to anti-elitist casting, and there is usually at least one stinkingly bad performance in every show there. I’m tempted to say that the 2006 Meryl Streep Mother Couragehit