This is the musical Hair at Teatro Coliseum in Madrid, our opinion

The new season musicals in Madrid, among the new features it brings, brings us the Revival of a classic, the musical Hair.

El musical Hair, which you can now see in the Arteria Coliseum Theater, premiered in New York in 1967, authored by James Rado and Gerome Ragni, and soon became a great mass phenomenon.

If you are very young, you may not know that the musical Hair was born as a reclaiming symbol against Vietnam War, as it tells the story of a commune of hippies who live in New York, and reject enlistment to go to the aforementioned war.

Some of his songs became true anthems, such as Aquarius, Good Morning Starshine o Let's the Sunshine In.

This musical reached London at the end of 1968, and was subsequently released in numerous countries. In 1979, the director Milos Forman made its film version, and in Madrid It premiered at the Alcalá Palace Theater in 1983, when it was already a classic and the hippie movement of the 60s was already history.

Subsequently, the musical Hair returned to the stage several times, adapted to current events. Thus, in 2005 in London a version set during the enlistment of the 2003 Gulf War, instead of the Vietnam War, was performed.

And in March 2009 was released remake on Broadway, which won the Tony Awards for Best Revival, and whose plot is very faithful to the original.

With the title Hair, Love & Love Musical, and under the direction of Daniel Anglés, resident director of Mamma Mia In Spain, this is the version that you can now see in Madrid, after having been released in Barcelona and Valencia.

At the time of going to see the musical Hair, I think your approach to it is important, although it will surely cause controversial feelings in you.

Do not expect a great choreographic spectacle, as in the case of El Rey León, another of the season's novelties. The entire work takes place on a single stage, shared by the 29 performers of the youth group from the hippie community and the eight musicians of the rock band.

Also, you may be shocked to hear the songs performed in Spanish, not as happened in the 1983 premiere, which was carried out by the same British company that had represented Hair in London.

Among the audience of very different ages that attends the performance, there are surely those who make a nostalgic approach. He even traveled to London to see Hair when it was one of the great protest symbols of the time. This audience will surely love to hear her most famous songs again.

La music and choreography of the group of hippies, under the respective direction of Sergi Cuenca and Esther Luengo, is, from my point of view, the best of the new Hair. And more than the performance of the main protagonists, the group as a whole and some truly splendid voices stand out.

This, without a doubt, helps the approach to Hair by younger people, like my 21-year-old niece who accompanied me, who knew nothing about the plot, and had not even heard the most popular songs of her day before.

I consider that more than seeing the musical Hair From a nostalgic perspective, it is better to make a historical and reflective approach.

It is almost better to see it as someone watching a period film since, in fact, almost half a century has already passed since the hippie movement of the 60s!! And some of the symbols of said movement that are revealed during the work, over time have proven to be a failure.

That would be the case of drugs, which we now know kill; the free sex of the pre-AIDS era, which has evolved into responsible sex; the communist flag, in a post-Iron Curtain world; or the Hare krishna, with the obvious current controversy with sects.

Even the Hair's vision of war It has a very distant perspective. Faced with a Vietnam War of mandatory conscription, and where almost 60.000 American soldiers died, the last one with the participation of the United States, that of Libya, has been won without a single Western death, and without even the soldiers touching land.

The reflective aspect of seeing the musical Hair Today it leads us to confirm that there are values ​​of the original work that persist: pacifism and no to war, freedom, the spirit of protest, the call to love...

But youth is very different: Hair hippies They were accused of being lost to society, of doing nothing, and they were expelled from school; and now, however, we are faced with the best educated youth in history, hooked on social networks with their smartphones or laptops, and not on marijuana.

In this way, in the final scene of Hair, the actors of the play also find the appropriate response from the audience to share the release.