Dan Kois

As an evening’s entertainment, Fela! is without peer: two and a half hours of electrifying music, astonishing dancing, and virtuosic stagecraft, anchored by a star turn as charismatic, and as taxing, as I’ve ever seen on Broadway. How charismatic? Fela’s a ringmaster, a bandleader, and the cult guru of the Shrine. And how taxing? He rarely leaves the stage, singing and dancing and joking like a demon—oh, and visiting his dead mother in the underworld. It’s draining enough that two actors alternate the role.

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair! There’s no shortage of the stuff in the joyous revival of the American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, currently sending enthusiastic crowds to the moon (in the Seventh House) at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. For the most part, Hair has made the transfer from Central Park with its high spirits intact. But during the famous mass-nudity moment, my companion noticed a lack of hair that helped crystallize what feels just a little off-kilter about this production: “I didn’t think,” she whispered, “that hippies had Brazilians.”