by Welton Jones
20-Jul-1997

Hair | La Boheme | Rent

What would the hippies of "Hair" think about their bohemian descendants three decades later, the ragtag collection of pilgrims who inhabit "Rent"?

It's an inevitable question. Both Broadway hits share a similar story -- young Manhattan rebels banding together for song, sex and salvation -- and each found commercial success in the Establishment marketplace it scorned.

"Rent," now enshrined at the La Jolla Playhouse, freely acknowledges its debt to another popular saga of youthful nonconformists paying the price, Puccini's 1896 opera "La Boheme." But the late Jonathan Larson drew at least as much substance from "Hair" when he was writing the words and music of "Rent."

As far as I'm concerned, the music makes two of the three works masterpieces and the third merely an interesting period curiosity.

"Boheme" is a sentimental romance, "Hair" is a populist fantasy and "Rent" is a naturalistic melodrama. More or less. Each is propelled by the vulnerable strengths and fragile idealism of fresh minds yearning for community while wrestling with possibility. And all three are poignant jolts of nostalgia for audiences grown up enough to afford high-priced tickets.

If anything can be deduced from the three-show set, it might be that nonconformity is becoming less boisterous and more intense.

The jolly dreamers of "La Boheme" anticipate being discovered and celebrated by the world. The hedonistic children of "Hair" long to change the world. The wretched strivers of "Rent" just want to survive.

Ironically, both Broadway shows borrow from their distinctly Establishment elders when a climax is needed.

As his heroine languishes, Larson borrows "Musetta's Waltz" from Puccini, wailed on an electric guitar, and it works. She revives.

And, when James Rado and Gerome Ragni have finished with the enormous U.S. history pageant that dominates the center of "Hair's" Act II, they follow quietly with the show's most unforgettable moment, a duet for two young men to Shakespeare's "What a piece of work is man . . . " from "Hamlet."

"La Boheme" is separated from today by an ocean, a language and a century, not to mention the baggage of a popular grand opera. But "Hair" and "Rent" are close kin.

They both occupy nearly the same space: Manhattan's Lower East Side. A crash pad in "Hair" is located at Third Street and Avenue C; the central loft of "Rent" is at 11th Street and Avenue B.

Both shows feature the entire ensemble but focus on a handful of quite similar characters: the sexy, anguished guy (Berger in "Hair"; Roger in "Rent"); his best friend, the dreamy filmmaker faced with the demands of adulthood (Claude contemplating his Army draft notice; Mark mulling an offer from tabloid TV); and the infatuated woman with one foot in the Establishment ("Hair's" Sheila; "Rent's" Joanne).

The two plays even share a few specific icons: Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni and The Village Voice newspaper, for example.

Far more instructive, though, are the differences reflected in two shows by three decades of change in American form and content.

There's nothing in "Hair" about women's rights, the homeless, virtual reality, Web sites, muggings, kiddie porn, Yuppies, junk bonds, Eurotrash or militias.

The shadow hanging over "Hair" is the Vietnam War, defined as "white people sending black people to kill yellow people in the name of land stolen from red people."

"Rent" has AIDS, which needs no elaboration. Four of the eight principal characters deal with the AIDS virus.

Attitudes, fads and trends force graphic changes in many areas. "Hair" treats sex as casual fun and drugs as holy sacraments. "Rent" finds both mainly dangerous. Clothing, beauty and, of course, hairstyles are all-important in "Hair," virtually ignored in "Rent."

"Hair" is nervous and evasive on the subject of sexual gender, whereas half the principals in "Rent" are gay and nobody much notices. In racial and ethnic references, though, "Hair" capers and kids around while "Rent" is rigorously politically correct.

In general, there's much more of a loose, anything-goes attitude around "Hair," which gleefully busted stage taboos on language, nudity, drugs and, to a certain point, sex, proselytizing for a tribal family that includes the whole world. "Rent" ignores such frivolity in the struggle to preserve its own small community.

The language could hardly be more different.

Rado and Ragni, two actors soaked in the vivid poetic excesses of four centuries and bombarded by the stylistic explosion of the mid-'60s, heaped words together in a delirium of imagery that could embarrass -- "They'll begaga at the go-go when they see me in my toga . . . " -- or confound -- "Ripped open by metal explosion" -- but which never moved "Hair" much beyond cartoon rage.

Larson, staggered by the squalor around him, is more thoughtful -- "The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation" -- but his vocabulary control leaves less room for inspiration and runs more risk of banality.

It is, finally, the music that makes the difference.

"Aquarius," "Where Do I Go" and the title song from "Hair" all served as anthems for a generation. "Frank Mills" -- in which the girl doesn't want her two dollars back, just him -- broke hearts. "Black Boys/White Boys" and "Sodomy" deliciously scandalized everybody. "Air" nailed the environment.   Nothing ever drove a finale like "The Flesh Failures" ("Let the Sunshine In"). "Good Morning Starshine," "Easy to Be Hard," "I Got Life," "Manchester" . . . take your pick.

Composer Galt MacDermot met Rado and Ragni while all were employed by Joe Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival; and his work on "Hair," which far exceeded anything else he ever did, served as a link between two eras of popular entertainment, the classic resonance of traditional theater and the raw power of rock 'n' roll.

Tom O'Horgan's elaborate Broadway staging, the fresh vitality of the young casts, the airy dismissal of traditional stagecraft -- all of it contributed to the impact then of the show. That's history. But that stage band, augmented by a pair of trumpets, still flows right out of the inadequate original cast album and into the gut.

Hearing "Rent" is like the old line about eating Chinese food. Tastes great but a half-hour later you're hungry again. Just try singing something of Larson's a day or so later.

The mingled cast of characters would undoubtedly find each other cool. When the music starts, though, the "Rent" guys sit down. And that's the way it will stay.