At the entrance to the Wadsworth Theater, a white announcement card warns theatergoers that the show they're about to see contains a gunshot, strobe lights and tobacco-less cigarettes smoked by people on stage.

That card cracked me up. Strobe lights and gun fire get a warning, but there's no hint that audience members might also be given flowers and fliers, and be encouraged to stand up and dance. Nor is there a single word that the entire cast will go "the full monty" as the first act comes to a close. (And me without my binoculars!)

Clearly, when it's "Hair" on the bill of fare, we're supposed to be ready for anything. Or to go with the flow. Flowers, pungent aromas from tobacco-less cigarettes, naked people ... hey kids, let the sunshine in!

Arthur Allan Seidelman's production of "Hair" for the Reprise! series has the counter-culture sensibility of 1968 in huge supply. The production sweeps, tidal-wave like, across the stage, into the audience, its datedness blasted away by sheer gusto of the performance. Boredom here is unthinkable.

The partially staged Reprise! format turns out to be a killer means of staging the "American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" by Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot. "Hair" doesn't need star wattage or technical frills. It needs voices and conviction. Contemporary resonance is built in, and not just because cast members are as likely to be bald, pierced and tattooed as to sport love beads or a bushy afro.

Robert L. Smith's set is largely bare and bombed out, with only a hint of the psychedelic in a back wall mural. The 11-piece band conducted by Peter Matz is dispersed across the second level, in full view, and not in hippie wear. And they cook.

"Hair" isn't really a musical in the conventional sense. Closer to a concert (it's been called a theatrical "sit-in"), the piece is a series of statements set to a rock score. There is a hero, Claude (played by Sam Harris), who inexplicably refuses to burn his draft card and ends up being offered, Christ-like, to Vietnam to pay for the sins of the establishment. His fellow hippies and flower children -- aka the tribe -- are left behind to mourn and celebrate him. Loudly.

There's a faint whiff of relationship tension, since Claude loves the student activist Sheila (Jennifer Leigh Warren) who loves Berger (Steven Weber, in a silly-looking wig). Jeanie (Marissa Jaret Winokur) loves Claude even though she's pregnant with another man's child, and Woof (Rod Keller) loves Mick Jagger. But love and self-interest aren't really part of Ragni and Rado's agenda. It feels perfunctory.

More often the tribe sings of drugs, sex, identity, racial tension and war. Anthems like "I Got Life," "Colored Spade," "Hippie Life" and "Ain't Got No" are mixed in with non-sequitur songs like "Frank Mills" (sung by a show-stopping Alisan Porter). A druggy dream sequence in Act 2 lets Claude meet up with some of the Founding Fathers, including a black Abraham Lincoln who says, "I'm not dying for no white man."

Seidelman keeps the music flowing, moving his large cast through more than 40 songs. The ensemble's vocal and dancing abilities (chorography by Travis Payne) are excellent across the board, and, even in a cast this size, there's plenty of opportunity for individual showcasing. Harris tears into "I Got Life," "Where Do I Go" and the title track, while Allan Louis nails "Colored Spade."

Even today, some may be shocked by the nudity, drugs and coarse language, particularly from an organization like Reprise! which is more apt to do tamer material. They shouldn't be. The types of musicals spawned by "Hair" -- "Rent" comes instantly to mind -- make what's on stage at the Wadsworth seem pretty tame. "Hair" is the animal that brought the term "rock musical" into existence. And in Seidelman and company's hands, it still sings.

"HAIR"

Where: Wadsworth Theater, 11301 Wilshire Blvd., Brentwood.

When: 8 p.m. today through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through Sunday.

Tickets: $30 to $65. Call (800) 233-3123.

Our rating: 3 1/2 stars

© 2001 Los Angeles Daily News