Aquarius

I once went to review a play that left me wondering what it was about. More importantly, what was I going to write about it? I decided to phone the features editor and tell him about my dilemma. I said: "There is simply nothing I can say about this play. It wasn't even dull or boring, it was nothing." "OK," he said, not understanding why I was turning down filthy lucre, "it's their loss."
It wouldn't have been because if I had been impored to fill a small gap in the newspaper the next day, I would have written something so scathing that the group putting the play on would have done one of a few things (a) given up acting (b) shot themselves (c) shot me.
Another show I could not comprehend but had some pleasure in seeing was "Hair". I did review it and remember only a phrase from my review where a young pregnant woman says something like "I got knocked up by a freaked out speed queen." I thought it a nicely delivered phrase, poetic, said a lot in a short sentence; it sort of summed up the show to me: mod rockish, youthful, new, against everything.
But I didn't really get the message of the play. I now do. I think. Here's a passage from one of the songs:
"Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehood or derisions
Golden living, dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberator,
Aquarius!
Aquarius!"
We don't want anything to do with the war in Vietnam, we're off to Canada; we don't want anything to do with any war, we want out of this society that is run by people who make war, we want peace, peace, peace; and we want drugs that make us feel pure spirits.
Something like that.
I'd like to see "Hair" again but the few times it has been revived, it soon died. "Hair" probably died when the flower people stopped celebrating love and peace and "grew up" into cynical adults.
Pity.