Midsumma: Hair

In this preview performance of Hair: The Rock Musical the music was good and the performances were enthusiastic, but it was ruined by the sound.

My annoyance at being unable to either discern the singing and dialogue from the music or hear it at all built to a rancour most unsuitable for a musical about peace and love.

I’m talking about a rare, sustained type of incompetence that only managed to adapt the sound from the first to the second half by introducing much more feedback.  Being able to hear very little of what these tie-died urchins are rebelling against just makes them look like wastrels obsessed with their own hedonism. I’m guessing that there might be just a teensy bit more to the story than that.

Hopefully in subsequent performances audiences won’t have to wait until the third last song to see that the character Claude actually has a functioning voice box that can produce a pleasant sound.

Congratulations to the cast for keeping the energy levels up (even more so if they were hiding their frustrations) until the end, for the only ensemble song I could completely hear was the final song, “Good Morning Starshine”.

Thanks for the excuse to visit my local DVD store.

I’ve seen far too many shows flawed by lack of skill, and previews sometimes have glitches, but this is an extreme.

Editor’s Note: Since that night, all sound issues have been fixed. The producers have confirmed that it was a nightmare tech sound night and welcome AussieTheatre back to see Hair how it’s meant to be heard.

Read our second review here