The Best Musical Since A Chorus Line?
If Shawn Macomber can be trusted, it's Walmartopia.
Walmartopia begins with Vicki Latrell, a present day single mom, working at Wal-Mart with her sassy teenage daughter, waiting on that ever-elusive promotion. Whether Vicki fails to climb the management ladder as a result of Wal-Mart's patriarchal power structure, or because whenever her manager leaves the sales floor she stops working to belt out songs Aretha Franklin-style while her chronically tardy teenage daughter idly complains their boss is a "creepy Christian crypto-fascist," isn't clear.
Yes, yes, it sounds like Marc Blitzstein was cryogenically frozen and forced to write a "contemporary" play by blinking his eyelids. Read on.
Alas, the gang that couldn't sweep straight stumbles into a presentation by an evil scientist who has found a hole in the time-space continuum allowing Wal-Mart execs to see future consumer trends. Sam Walton's reanimated, discombobulated head—don't ask—orders the Latrells thrown into the time warp.
The Latrells land in a neon future dystopia that makes Blade Runner and THX 1138 look like The Adventures of Milo and Otis. The aforementioned mindless automaton population marches in lockstep singing refrains such as "We were born to consume/from the cradle to the tomb." Wal-Art puts on pro-consumer productions like The Phantom of the Mart School-Mart teaches kids to "shop, stock and mop." Walton's head, not Rupert Murdoch, provides the daily propaganda now, while Security-Mart runs the police state and Prison-Mart. Given the milieu, it's a safe bet to say Social Security has also been privatized.
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