The Encores! concert production of Hair, which played a record breaking run at City Center May 3-7, may transfer to a Broadway run next season, several dailies reported May 11. According to sources, the two producing groups interested in the property at Fran and Barry Weissler (Seussical, Annie Get Your Gun) and the Francel/Baruch/Viertel/Routh Group (The Producers).
The Weisslers successfully transferred the yet-running revival of Chicago, still the only Encores! production to move to Broadway.
Biff Liff, of William Morris, told the New York Times that the producers were "very happy with the production," but that "nothing is firm." Liff represents Hair co-creators James Rado and Gale MacDermott and the estate of the late Gerome Ragni.
Apparently, the show would move with its Encores! cast intact. Tom Plotkin played Berger, the role first played by Hair co-creator Gerome Ragni. Kevin Cahoon was Berger's slightly more roguish sidekick Woof. Also in the cast are Luther Creek (as Claude), Brandi Chavonne Massey (Dionne), Michael McElroy (as Hud), Idina Menzel (as Sheila), Miriam Shor (as Jeanie) and Jessica-Snow Wilson (as Crissy), and Rosalind Brown, Bryant Carroll, E. Alyssa Claar, Gavin Creel, Kathy Deitch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jessica Ferraro, Billy Hartung, Todd Hunter, Eric Millegan, Sean Jeremy Palmer, Sheri Sanders, Carolyn Saxon, Michael Seelbach, and Yuka Takura.
The legendary, counter-culture musical, by the untried team of Ragni and Rado and composer MacDermot, debuted at the New York Shakespeare Festival, courtesy of Joe Papp. Neophyte producer Michael Butler saw the show and moved it a disco in the Broadway area and, finally, to the Biltmore Theatre, where it ran for several years. Tom O'Horgan directed the production. Also in the cast were Steve Curry, Lamont Washington, Lynn Kellogg, Sally Eaton and a young Diane Keaton. A 1979 film by Milos Foreman starred Treat Williams, Beverly D'Angelo, John Savage and Annie Golden. Williams and Golden are both on Broadway at present, in Follies and The Full Monty, respectively.
—By Robert Simonson
