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‘Hair’ Returns to Broadway for Limited Run

‘Hair’ Returns to Broadway for Limited Run

The national tour for “Hair,” which won a Tony Award in 2009, is adding an unusual stop on their itinerary: Broadway.

On Wednesday, Public Theater announced that “Hair” was returning on July 5, which is a little over a year after closing on Broadway. The musical will have a run of almost 10 weeks at St. James Theater ( later this month “American Idiot” is closing there). Performances will end on September 10. The producers then plan on taking “Hair” back out on the road throughout the U.S.

Major national tours of musicals rarely add New York as one of their stops. However the 2009 tour of “Dreamgirls” kicked off their touring with an engagement at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

The “Hair” Broadway encore will be featuring a mixture of 2009 revival cast members (Kracie Sheik playing Jeanie and Darius Nichols in the role of Hud) as well as from the tour, which includes Paris Remillard in the role of Claude and Steel Burkhardt playing Berger. Caren Lyn Tacket performed the role of Sheila in the 2008 Central Park pre-Broadway run and will be reprising her role this summer on Broadway.

In March 2009, the revival of “Hair” opened on Broadway with Diane Paulus directing. It soon became critically successful and a favorite of audiences. The show received eight Tony nominations and won one award as best revival of a musical. By August 2009, the producers, who in 2008 struggled with raising money for mounting the Broadway revival following the onset of the recession, had earned their $5.7 million investment back. It was one of the faster recoupments from recent history.

In June 2010, the revival ended its run on Broadway following a drop off in box office sales after many of the original cast members left to perform in the London run. The London production, despite garnering good reviews, ran for just five months.

The not-for-profit Off-Broadway theater The Public lost $200,000 from the run in London. The failure led to the ousting of executive director Andrew D. Hamingson this winter. He left after board members after the fact discovered that Hamingson had undertaken financial commitments for the “Hair” London production in addition to transferring “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” to Broadway without their complete knowledge. In The Times Hamingson said as executive director that his decisions were part of his purview.

A “Hair” executive said it wasn’t necessary to acquire new capitalization for the forthcoming run on Broadway because the national tour’s budget already included it.