A mass strip on the stage of the Metro Theatre, King's Cross, last night climaxed Sydney's wildest-ever theatrical first night.
In the tumultuous last number of the first act of the love-rock musical "HAIR", most of the cast struggled out of their clothes under cover of a tent-like sheet.
The pastel lighting was subdued, but the figures were still clearly visible.
Even before the mass strip began three girls, two white and one Negro, stripped to the waist in the second to last number "Be in" and danced with bare breasts.
BOMB HOAX
The night was exciting throughout, from the-traffic jams which caused the curtain to be rung up 20 minutes late to the arrival of a small force of police at interval.
The police were not - in spite of some audience fears - coming to arrest the cast.
They were looking for smoke bombs which a telephone caller had reported to Life Line were under a seat in the theatre. The call was apparently a hoax.
The first-night audience arrived in pouring rain with women in elaborate evening gowns and highswept hair running through the showers from cars which could not reach the theatre.
Sartorially speaking it was the men's evening.
The girls were in floppy trousers and elaborate tops and a few wore the lowest necklines seen in Sydney for many years.
But they could not compete with the splendour of the men.
The more conservative males wore elaborately frilled shirts and outsize medallions with their evening dress.
But the younger men ran to the most outrageous varieties of mod gear.
They wore Regency dress and befrogged and gilded military uniforms, sombrero hats, furs, feathers, silks, satins and brocades.
The audience took everything in its stride - near nudity throughout, joyous shouting of four-letter words, bare-breasted dancing and the mass strip.
"Hair" opened its Sydney season last night with the official approval of the Chief Secretary, Mr E. A. Willis.
After attending a preview of the show on Wednesday night Mr Willis said "Hair" was not his type of entertainment.
But he saw no need to take any action against it. Mr Willis said: "I must admit I don't really understand it.
"I cannot possibly support the way 'Hair' lampoons accepted standards of morality and loudly proclaims almost every known vice, from blasphemy and drug-taking to homosexuality and draft-dodging.
"However, it's cleverly presented and quite revolutionary as a form of theatre."
