Diatribes, at a Discount

Ah, the curse of finding success at the Fringe Festival. A reputed hit at last year's Fringe, the cheeky corporate-bashing musical Walmartopia has just commenced an open-ended run, and the results are not promising.

The critics have not been kind, and I can't say that I entirely disagree. Their main complaint is the cornucopia of styles and mixed messages that plague the stage. I was also irritated by the gratuitous shifts in emotional tempo and dramatic thrust, but I was more disappointed that the show didn't teach me anything new. With its "Wal-Mart is evil" message, the writers settle for preaching to the choir (assuming that choir is a liberal, educated bunch who are keen to sniff out social injustice). In catapulting its heroines thirty years into the future to simplistically and predictably solve the problems of the Wal-Mart-worshiping neo-universe, this production safely skirts around addressing the problems of the present.

I felt a bit of that chronological dissonance when I watched the classic film 9 to 5 for the first time recently. As Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Lily Tomlin fantasized about killing their boss and then cleverly spun corporate life for the better, I felt like I had opened a time capsule, a bit of nostalgia in a DVD. But as any smart woman (or man) knows, sexism still runs rampant in the workplace, even if it doesn't stare blatantly at your chest and ask you to fetch it coffee.

The point is, entertainment can be a tonic and a panacea for bigger, and always more complex, issues. Walmartopia wants us to unseat the world-dominating corporation, but does it really? Where's the action plan, and where are the specifics? When the solution is the homogenized maxim "think outside the big box," it's hard to take the show very seriously. This production might have an agenda, but it's definitely more "let me entertain you" than "do you hear the people sing."

Ironically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the show's best moments are its show-within-a-show production numbers, such as "These Bullets are Freedom" (pictured above), the resolutely earnest call-to-arms in the Wal-Mart dystopia of 2037. A piece of straightforward propaganda, the skit trades in both ideology and commerce, inciting political loyalty while trying to sell a new gun model. Here, it's easy--and chilling--to see how the media attempts to brainwash us. It's unfortunate that the rest of the show isn't this in-your-face; instead, the creators fall victim to the very advice they give us: don't settle for a cheap and phony product.

Show Business Weekly review: Walmartopia