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The spirit of ‘Hair’ still echoes true
By John Benson
Even though David Truskinoff joined the creative team reviving “Hair” in 2010, the veteran Broadway musical director and conductor actually started working on the musical score decades ago when he spent hours as a child staring at the album cover.
“When I was growing up my parents were always very fond of musical theater, so we would sit around the living room listening to different musicals on Sundays,” said Truskinoff, calling from Philadelphia. “We’d sit in the living room and sing along with it. ‘Hair’ was a mainstay on the record player. When I was a young kid, I knew all of the words and of course would just imagine in my mind what it looked like and sounded like. So here it is 40 years later and it’s a thrill to be doing it for real.”
The thrill of “Hair,” which includes popular musical numbers like “Let the Sun Shine In,” “Aquarius,” “Hair” and “Good Morning Starshine,” continues its Cleveland run this week at the Palace Theatre. The 2009 Tony Award-winning musical revival depicts the birth of a cultural movement in the ’60’s and ’70’s that changed America forever. The musical follows a group of hopeful, free-spirited young people who advocate a lifestyle of pacifism and free love in a society riddled with intolerance and brutality during the Vietnam War.
The production explores everything from sexual identity and racism to drug experimentation and anti-war sentiment. Oddly enough, more than 40 years after it first opened on Broadway the production’s spirit echoes true in 2012 with the recent Occupy Wall Street movement.
From a musical standpoint, the material is definitely a product of its era, with rock songs that, well, jam. Truskinoff said that feeling isn’t by accident.
“I had the pleasure of meeting and playing for Galt MacDermot, who wrote the music for ‘Hair,’” Truskinoff said. “He actually said just in keeping with the whole vibe of the show, he loved if it sounded a little bit different every night. If you say that to a theater musician that’s like, ‘Here, have some candy.’ What a dream. So every night we do sound a little bit different and what a thrill that is. It’s really been a blast.”
The idea of being involved in a production where music is the central focus is nothing new to Truskinoff, who served as the Broadway and national touring music director for “Rent.” He said the two shows are similar in the sense they both embody a message of love, freedom and acceptance.