5.0
Small today, Hair tomorrow
Toronto Star
Richard Ouzounian, Theatre Critic
Could Da Kink in My Hair turn out to be the Hair of the 21st century?
Although no one is actually saying so out loud, there's hope from those connected with the Mirvish Production remounting of trey Anthony's play that this might be the crossover hit that everyone has been dreaming of. Ever since its 2001 premier at the Toronto Fringe Festival, where it proved to be that year's most popular show, this look at the life inside a West Indian hair salon in Toronto has been box office magic.
A remount at Harbourfront in 2002 played to packed houses; so did a stint at the New York International Fringe Festival that same year, as well as a revival at Theatre Passe Muraille in the summer of 2003.
Despite that audience acclaim, it still seemed like a strange choice for a Mirvish subscription season.
Its mixture of monologues and songs had a rough-edged appeal that sat comfortably in the various alternative venues the show played in. But how will things look on the luxurious stage of the Princess of Wales Theatre, the recent home of mega-musicals like The Lion King and Hairspray?
The Mirvishes have been known to take such chances before, moving an earlier Fringe hit, the spoofy The Drowsy Chaperone, to the Winter Garden, or remounting Djanet Sears' Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God for an extended run at its original Harbourfront venue.
But this is something different: A deliberate rough-edged, decidedly populist show attempting the leap to mainstream, big-theatre commercial success.
If it works, it will mark the first time such a scenario has been successful in Canada, although there are several fascinating precedents south of the border.
Pins and Needles started out in 1937 as a satiric romp by members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, but its score by Harold Rome proved so seductive that it moved to Broadway for 1,108 performances, which remained the long-run record until Oklahoma! came along a few years later.
Hair began as loose collections of lyrics unemployed Broadway actors James Rado and Gerome Ragni that were set to music by Canadian Galt Mac Dermot.
Joseph Papp let it find its reformed way as one of the initial offerings in his Lafayette Street Public Theatre in the fall of 1967.
It wound up moving to a discotheque named Cheetah before being totally revamped.
It reached Broadway in the spring of 1968.
Once there, it proved to be a revolutionary hit that ran for 1,750 performances and, for better or worse, brought rock to the musical theatre.
Nearly 30 years later, a similar kind of lighting struck the East Village.
A composer-lyricist named Jonathan Larson had been struggling for years to bring his own, edgy version of Puccini's opera La Boheme to the stage, creating a world of hookers, addicts, and drag queens who struggled to make their existence in the "alphabet city" of Manhattan's Lower East Side.
After countless rejections, the tiny New York Theatre Workshop agreed to produce Larson's musical, but the author died of an aortic aneurysm on Jan. 25, 1996.
His project opened two weeks later to rave reviews and moved to Broadway by the end of April, winning Larson a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. It's still running after 3,620 performances.
The show is called Rent.
Another recent example of starting small and winding up big is the musical Urinetown.
Authors Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman wrote their quasi-Brechtian satire in 1997, only to have it rejected by literally every professional producer and regional theatre in America.
In desperation, they mounted it themselves at the New York Fringe Festival in 1999.
It proved an instant hit and, after some work, arrived on Broadway on 2001, where it ran for 965 performances and won three Tony Awards.
It's since been seen across North America, including a successful Toronto run this past summer.
What do all these shows - Pins and Needles, Hair, Rent, and Urinetown - have in common with Da Kink in my Hair?
They all began with authors who were anxious to put people and experiences on stage that had never been there before. It doesn't matter whether the topic was union strife, the free love movement, Generation X, or corporate greed.
It may not have sounded like the material of a hit musical, but amazingly enough, that's how it ended up.
And, in every case, the project started small, but became big hits thanks to an overwhelming popular groundswell.
That sounds an awful lot like Trey Anthony's show, based on something as simple as a group of black women telling their stories at a hair salon.
But simple can be successful, and the distance from Da Kink in my Hair may turn smaller than anyone ever dreamed.
Let's wait and see.