My son certainly seemed on a journey of some kind at “Hair,” the revival of the 1967 rock musical that transferred from the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. He asked to switch seats with me so he could be on the aisle — the better to encounter the dynamic cast members straddling people in the audience and spilling off the stage and roving all over the theater. We traded places after intermission, and within minutes a sultry actress with a bare midriff planted herself on Ethan’s lap, ran her fingers through his hair and queried, “Who’s your date?” (Bummer: that would be me, Mom.)
– In the New York Times, Robin Pogrebin writes about her efforts to cultivate a love of Broadway in her children, generational gaps and awkward sexual scenes be damned. This reminded us of a few of our own experiences with age-inappropriate audiences: recently, one of us took in Hair mere feet from a three- and a five-year-old, whose parents defended their presence thusly: “They’ll only understand what they need to.” Still, it beats the time we sat behind a dad and his two toddlers at the Sex and the City movie last summer. None of them were part of the movie’s demographic, so we probably shouldn’t have been surprised when, halfway through the movie, the dad answered the phone and proceeded to have a conversation about how much the movie “sucked.” Parents just don’t understand!