By Carla Zanoni
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
TIMES SQUARE — Self-proclaimed hippies, fans and cast members alike, are taking to Times Square every afternoon in hopes of one last summer of love for "Hair", the 1968 revival set to take its final curtain call on June 27, three months earlier than previously announced.
A Facebook group of more than 1,600 members is asking for support from fans at the daily Times Square rallies in return for free tickets to the show.
“It feels a little too late,” Lauren Thomson, a 23-year-old film student at the School of Visual Arts who lives in the West Village said. “We were all expecting it, but maybe not this soon.”
The show’s ticket sales at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre at 302 West 45th Street dropped after the original cast left to perform in London, which will be closing early as well.
“But once you hear how much they have been losing you realize why,” her friend Emily Westbrook, 24, who lives nearby in Hell’s Kitchen, added.
Thomson and Westbrook said they have seen the play at least 80 times each and hope the daily rallies may convince producers to keep the show running through the summer.
"Hair," which began its run at the Public Theater’s Delacorte Theater in Central Park during the summer of 2008, won critical acclaim that summer and went on to win a 2009 Tony Award for best Broadway musical revival.
Initial ticket sales were so great that Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis told the New York Times in April 2009 that investors would “get a lot better returns than the S&P 500.”
American Idol performers Diana DeGarmo and Ace Young were recently cast, but ticket sales could not come close to the show’s initial financial success in 2009 when ticket sales recouped the production’s initial costs in 18 weeks.
Arbender Robinson, 33, the dance captain for "Hair," said he had long voiced concern about waning marketing and advertising around the show after its initial success and did not think rallying would necessarily keep the musical on Broadway, but said he is committed to rallying daily regardless.
“I still don’t understand why we are out here fighting for this and not the people who initially fought so hard to bring it to Broadway,” he said.
“The message of this musical goes beyond community and monetary success, it’s about the message: You always have a voice and you can always change the way things are with it.”
