Many conscientious shoppers in Madison avoid Wal-Mart like the plague. Mercury Players Theatre brings the nefarious big box store and all of its loathsome policies in their farcical production, 'Walmartopia.' Local couple Catherine Capellaro and Andrew Rosin wrote a shorter version of Walmartopia for the opening of the Overture Center and developed the idea into a full-length musical production.
The musical, for all of its well deserved stabs and one-liners directed at Wal-Mart's cutthroat business practices, largely lands haphazardly in the viewer's lap as two divergent acts that are tied together with the barest of threads.
Act I follows department manager and single mother Vicki Latrell (Anna Jayne Marquardt) as she gets constantly belittled and picked over for promotion by her sexist boss (John Gustafson). Pearson consistently chooses a young, yuppie employee (Sean Langenecker) over Latrell, and the audience gets taken on a parade of songs and scenes that show Vicki's battles of self-justification and hopelessness on her uphill battle against her thankless employer. Act I culminates with her in the boardroom of Wal-Mart's headquarters ('To Bentonville!') attempting to voice her very real concerns with the company's top brass. Next, she is thrown into a time portal by mad Wal-Mart scientist Dr. Normal and is sent 30 years into the company's future right before the intermission.
'Walmartopia' has many pointed critiques against Wal-Mart's business and ethics, but the playwrights use its second act to show the dystopian scenario that Wal-Mart has taken over the entire country, instead of furthering the story of Vicki's low-wage job and its impact on her.
If the musical had been strictly a realistic drama about the harsh life of a female Wal-Mart employee, it could have worked. If it had been a farcical take on a fictional future where Wal-Mart is at war in its quest to dominate the country, it could have worked. But throwing these two ideas together into one show simply does not work. Neither compelling angle was given enough room to expand to the levels that both deserved and were poised to reach.
The actors display a lot of talent and the songs are for the most part well crafted, with notable performances by the perfectly cast Marquardt as Vicki. Her daughter as played by Kelly Murphy uses a beautiful singing voice to maximum effect on a duet with Marquardt. Mikhael A. Farah does double duty with the roles of Miguel and Zeb, and does so very capably.
Overall, the play is creative and intriguing on the points it brings up about the country's largest employer. But 'Walmartopia' preaches very loudly to Madison's liberal choir that already avoids Wal-Mart, providing no more than regurgitated factoids about the company. It could have been much better if it had offered a poignant and complete look at the psychological and financial effects on its employees, instead of the divergent and Orwellian conclusion that was created.
