Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers

by Jim Testa

WALMARTOPIA
At The Minetta Lane Theater, NYC

Most New Yorkers don’t have any firsthand experience shopping at Wal-Mart, since the City has so far kept the nation’s #1 retailer outside its borders; but anyone who reads the news knows about the corporate giant’s many egregious sins – underpaying workers by keeping most of its million-plus employees on a sub-standard hourly wage instead of a decent salary; providing insufficient (or no) health insurance; institutionalized sexual discrimination; and of course, destroying local mom-and-pop businesses whenever a new mega-mart descends on a community. There’s enough corporate greed, chicanery, and corruption there to fill three or four Michael Moore documentaries, but how best to present those issues on the stage?

The problem with Walmartopia – a musical written by the husband-and-wife team of Catherine Capellaro and Andrew Rohn, originally presented at the 2006 Fringe Festival and now mounted in a much larger production for Off Broadway – is that it can’t decide. It lurches from poignant social drama to an over-the-top sci-fi spoof, juxtaposing heart-rendering family pathos with cartoonish satire.

The play starts by dramatizing the plight of Vicki and Maia Latrell, a Wal-Mart floor clerk and her teenaged daughter, who are forced to live in a motel and depend on government benefits because Vicki’s been unfairly passed over for promotion by younger and less qualified male employees. When one of their co-workers starts whispering about a union, he’s quickly fired, while wannabe singers Vicki and Maia are co-opted to appear in a musical glorifying Wal-Mart’s treatment of women, part of the company’s propaganda campaign against a class action suit.

The tone shifts to ham-handed satire as we’re treated to a behind-the-scenes look at the smug corporate overseers who delight in maximizing Wal-Mart’s profits by mistreating employees and selling the public shoddy goods imported from China. But then things go completely goofy, as Wal-Mart’s resident mad scientist invents some sort of time portal that sucks the disembodied head of Wal-Mart’s late founder Sam Walton from the past. Vicki and Maia – at corporate HQ to perform in the company musical – stumble onto the secret and get thrown into the time portal and catapulted 30 years into the future.

In Act Two, Vicki and Maia find themselves in a future society where Wal-Mart has taken over the world (except, somehow, for the tiny, independent State of Vermont.) Kids are sent to School-Mart, the sick to Medi-Mart, and criminals to Prison-Mart, which is where Maia and Vicki are quickly dispatched. They’re soon furloughed to Art-Mart, where a swishy director (seemingly plucked from the touring company of “The Producers”) is mounting another pro-Wal Mart musical (this one condoning the war against Vermont.) Maia and Vicki join an underground resistance group and somehow manage to foil the Wal-Mart army’s “surge” into New England, which manages to dilute the play’s focus on corporate greed by turning the final scenes into a clumsy anti-war allegory.

Yes, it’s a mess, a lot of it doesn’t make any sense, and the constant shifts in mood (from serious to satiric to cartoonish) can give you whiplash. The songs and many of the set pieces, while sometimes rousing, seem borrowed from other musicals, and the undazzling choreography could easily be staged by your typical community theater.

Where “Walmartopia” succeeds is as a showcase for several gifted performers who are well worth seeing. Cheryl Freeman and especially young Nikki James anchor the cast as Vicky and Maia, belting out everything from torch songs to spirituals to rousing rock and roll numbers. John Jellison also provides much-needed stability in his role as “Scooter” Smiley, the evil Wal-Mart CEO. Of the supporting cast, Stephen DeRosa shines as a natural comic; and if his turn as Dr. Normal, the mad scientist, seemed a little too borrowed from Martin Short for me, he’s hilarious as the befuddled hippie Vermonter in the big pro-Wal Mart musical at the end of Act Two. Scotty Watson injects his role as the head of Sam Walton with the redneck gusto of Bug Bunny’s old nemesis, Yosemite Sam, and Brennen Leath (impressive in several male ingénue roles) is clearly on his way to much bigger and better things.

I’d have much preferred Walmartopia if it had consistently maintained the manic energy of his spoofiest, silliest parts. But by lurching from drama to politics to satire to social commentary and back again, the show leaves you entertained, but unsure of exactly what you’ve been watching.

(www.walmartopia.com)