The concept of a hippie musical with an electronic score is potentially very exciting, and I am convinced that the sound of rock—a sound that has developed real drive, sophistication and vitality—is destined to become of tremendous importance to our stage. But despite its effective moments, Hair is still too closely linked to the meretricious conventions of American musicals to realize this potential, and there is something intrinsically one-dimensional in the hippie movement which prevents the material from ever developing a texture of any thickness.

Since the hippies have recently become the victims of a vast publicity network, there is also something intrinsically voguish about their scene, and this gives one the recurrent feeling that Hair is going out of fashion even as it is being performed. Like Viet Rock—to which it owes its inspiration and even a few of its episodes—Hair is pieced...