Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public, brought on Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel, while at the same time trying to keep Ms. McCann and her investors onboard. (Ms. McCann stayed with the show, but not as lead producer.)  Mr. Richards had a number of shows onstage or coming up — “Speed-the-Plow,” “Blithe Spirit” and “reasons to be pretty” among them — when he became involved with “Hair” this winter.  “We felt at the time that ‘Hair’ would fill a void on Broadway, in that it had great pop rock appeal, and ‘Rent’ and ‘Spring Awakening’ had left the scene,” he said in an interview.  “We also felt there were areas where we could certainly not spend as much as had been budgeted,” Mr. Richards said. He and the show’s director, Diane Paulus, said no one part of the budget was cut significantly. However, Ms. Paulus’s decision to forgo a lavish set helped keep costs low.  “During the darker days of the winter, when things were a little up in the air, I just kept my eyes on the prize and knew we had to organize ourselves correctly to stay on budget,” Ms. Paulus said. “I knew that all we needed was to get the show up and running, and people would come out of the woodwork for it.”  Mr. Richards said he was confident that “Hair” had a good shot at being financially successful because it had a potentially broad audience base.  “When ‘Hair’ first came out, it never did much business with people over 50,” he said of the original Broadway production, which ran from 1968 to 1972. “And now the people who saw it the first time are coming again — and many of them are over 50, of course, so we have them as well as the younger generations.”  Mr. Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, said he was especially pleased that “somehow through all of the tribulations of the transfer process from the park, we’ve been able to both protect the quality of the show and mount a show that so many people want to see.”  “It’s striking that while investors saw putting money into the show as a risk during the winter, ‘Hair’ has now turned out to be a very safe investment,” he continued. “We’re going to recoup the total original investment soon. We’re going to get a lot better returns than the S&P 500.”  An article on Tuesday about the improved financial outlook for the Broadway revival of “Hair” described incorrectly a part of the set, which was not as lavish as originally envisioned, a change that helped reduce expenses. The backstage wall at the Al Hirschfeld Theater was not left exposed; rather, it is a set piece designed to look like an exposed back wall.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the National edition with the headline: Producers Relieved Over Future Of ‘Hair’. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The Broadway musical “Hair” has emerged as one of the financial and artistic successes of the spring theater season.