Someone Please Cut This Hair!

Hair - Stadttheater Hildesheim, 18th October, 2013

It's no fun any more seeing shows at the TfN.

I am seriously wondering what has happened to the musical company since the distinguished Christian Gundlach left but pretty much all productions were disappointing for me whatever others say and/or write and with this production of "Hair" it has reached undermost bottom. 

I actually really do not want to write much about the show.
I'd just love to say: go and see the misery for yourself (though if you have not seen Hair before you actually may find something in it to enjoy but if you have seen it as I have, especially the Broadway and the London production (well the London transfer of the Broadway one) starring e.g. Gavin Creel you may want to save the money and/or give it to a good cause). 

Director - Katja Buhl
Musical Director - Andreas Unsicker
Choreography - Annika Dickel
Stage Set and Costumes - Steffen Lebjedzinski

Claude - Jonas Hein
Berger - Jens Plewinski
Hud - Mario Mariano
Woof/ Father I / Director III - Tim Müller
Ronny/ Father II / Director II - Alexander Prosek
Paul/ Father III / Director I - Jens Krause
Sheila - Caroline Zins
Crissie - Magdalene Orzol
Jeanie / Mutter II - Michaela Linck
Dionne / Mutter III - Kerstin Ried
Mary - Asya Pritchard
Marjorie - Nadine Ewa Noack

I am all in favour for supporting local rep theatre but when all they deliver are ridiculous productions, even of utter gems, then even I refuse to continue to spend it on shows where a director clearly seems to think a show as Hair is selling itself and does not need much work.

Saying that very much all of Katja Buhl's (directing) jobs in the last few years have been, well, uninspired with no to little working concept that I am seriously questioning her skill set.

It is simply not enough for me to put a couple of (partly totally miscast) performers onstage, add a functional, even if miles away from what I expect to see in a piece inspired by a generation searching for freedom, independence, individuality and spiritualism of which two people came up with the idea of Hair, choreography, have a band hidden in the orchestra pit with some panels covering it so that the sound was way too clean, when there are so well known songs as "Aquarius" and "Let The Sunshine", normally sounding rather sappy and energetic, here sounding like ambling along and insipidly, some lame lighting concept, some way too clean costumes etc. and then hope it will work. Well it does not work like that at all and I know that without calling myself a director but a theatregoer for several decades having seen nearly 200 different musicals and for nearly half of them at least two different productions. 

The issue with "Hair" is that with the simplistic original musical it just needs much more than just a way too quick sequence of songs including a way too quick and hectic choreography with little much more of a story (there are actually the odd productions now these days which will use the movie version as a guideline for a stage version), it requires some great work from the director and the rest of the creative team to make it come to life, to give it some meaning beyond just simply being like a concert - and this production is, but the odd moment, especially when the focus was on either Jens Krause or Michaela Linck's characters (way too little focus on especially Jens Krause, what a waste once again of talent!) who were for me the only moments when there was some kind of character elaboration though I had the impression this is due to their own excellent skills that they made something out of the parts than due to the failing creative team, is not more, not less.

You have hardly a chance to understand the motifs of the characters properly, do not learn about them a lot, actually way too little, you are kept at such a distance to them despite the odd visit of some characters into the audience, so I could not care less about them even not when Jonas Hein's Claude when he is joining the army and going abroad to be be killed at the end  - and that me who is touched usually rather easily being one hypersensitive.

But maybe that is wanted.
Just do not give the audience something to think about, to question the history.
Or expect the audience to do the understanding job for themselves? Or maybe the director expected the majority to have lived through that decade so they would know how it kinda was or how the show implies it was??
Or, or, or, or nothing of all that and something completely different???
I do not know. And actually I do not want to know.

Having seen the show before I have answered it for myself what this show is to mean for me, but this production actually does not even get close to that.
All I actually want to know is when am going to be spared this kind of productions at the TfN, when I can actually enjoy and adore shows and the cast in them there again as I used to soooooo much as "Secret Garden", "The Baker's Wife", "Side Show", "Children of Eden" and so on....
All such special and fond memories to me but not much is left of that....

Not that in the ensemble there is much left of the speciality. Once the TfN musical company was made up of individuals, these days it continues to feel like visiting IKEA, all items you can get there practical and usually functioning more or less well with usually you having issues to assemble just that one shelf you bought but none really but a very few items standing out and being something special but more boring and bored and me thinking that I have to go to a specialised shop to find that little bit of extra as you simply cannot get that at IKEA.

For me musical is just more than decent singing - I can just put on a CD or listen to some MP3's, switch on some music channel and get that.
It is about expressing feelings, the audience is to be transported, to be caught and that just simply does not happens by just hitting the right note and that unfortunately is the case at the TfN at the moment.
The majority just simply do not catch me, it is, as said already, just the old stagers Jens and Michaela can do that giving their characters some edge and brigo, not even Jonas Hein and Jens Plewinski, whom in past I adored can add more to the characters than inconsistency and boredom (Jens Plewinski - one second high, the other one not, the third second high again) and schmaltzy-ness that German smooch singer Xavier Naidoo feels like hardcore (Jonas Hein).

Overall an evening I wished I had not to sit through and having been to London the week after I realised even further how weak that performance was seeing much better and more motivated performances even at two fringe theatres. I am better off now... wrote already a lot more than I wanted to.

See trailer of musical >>here.