The original peace-and-love rock musical is back, and it’s not pulling any punches. Hair opens Lake Worth Playhouse’s 73rd season with a thunderclap of rhythm, rebellion, and radical hope. Directed by Suzanne Dunn, this production honors the hopeful spirit of the 1967 Broadway sensation while reminding today’s audiences that the fight for freedom and equality is far from over.
“Our young cast has been shocked to realize how much progress has backtracked,” Dunn tells PureHoney. “Why is there still bigotry? Why can’t love be love? Why are we destroying the planet or sending young people to war? These questions still don’t have answers.”
Dunn is no stranger to bold material, with credits that also show versatility and sharp thematic instincts, from The Sound of Music and Respect: A Musical Journey of Women to Death by Design, Church and State, and The Bachelorette.
Rooted unapologetically in its original setting, Hair refuses to be a museum piece. With songs like “Aquarius,” “Hair,” and “Let the Sunshine In,” the show is packed with countercultural anthems — but it’s not just peace signs and protest chants. This staging confronts the provocative elements — nudity, drug use, anti-war outrage — with nuance, intentionality, and care. “These should have become passé almost 60 years later. That’s the conversation we hope to spark — why haven’t they?” Dunn says.
Dunn and her creative team employ an intimacy coach and ensure a consent-based rehearsal environment. Nudity, when it appears, is brief and symbolic. “It’s not sexualized. It’s a rebirth. A casting off of old expectations. A Garden of Eden moment,” she explains. The show invites a raw honesty, asking audiences to dig deep, listen, and—above all—choose love.
While Hair bursts with color and joy, it is very much intended for mature audiences. It doesn’t flinch in the face of hard truths, and it invites viewers—especially younger generations — to recognize the continuity of resistance across time. “Modern audiences will be able to make the connections between then and now,” Dunn says. “The global struggles, closed mindsets, fear, and positioning for power are the same.”
Hair runs July 18-August 3 at the Lake Worth Playhouse in Lake Worth. lakeworthplayhouse.org ~ Abel Folgar
