Gil Hates Everything

This is a 2005 NY Fringe show which managed a brief off-Broadway run. It sounds exactly like it, too; it’s got that “in the absence of anything intelligent, let’s be funny” vibe which characterises much Fringe material. (That’s not to say Fringe material is intrinsically bad; it just often happens to be not-very-good…)

The plot is: a downtrodden single mom works for Walmart in the present day, and is then ejected into the future by a time machine, where Walmart rules America and only Vermont stands proud and free. And then probably something else happens, I can’t tell.

The songs are a long procession of fast cheap jokes, with the occasional mild success. “A Woman’s Place” and “Flash Them Bootstraps” are okay I suppose. The mother-daughter duet at the end, “What Kind Of Mother?”, is also alriiiiiight I suppose. But once we hit the future, the songs are mostly just sixty-second snippets, so I presume there’s a bunch of script.

But I don’t think I’d bother. It’s a one-listen show, and I get the point. The strange thing is that the show does seem to be trying for a certain earnestness, buried amongst the comedy song and dance. Globalization, Walmart’s buying power, minimum wage exploitation, yes, yes, terrible things, but for me, taking it sixty years into the future and talking about “Walmartopia” – oooh, see us being edgy, an evil corporation will be taking over the planet! – sounds as ineffectual as “We Will Rock You”‘s futuristic shenanigans about the banning of ‘real music’. Science fiction did this shit sixty years ago, Judge Dredd was doing this shit thirty years ago, and while the show gets lefty points for taking aim at this target, it has no bite beyond the predictable, and I’m sure it’s lame critiques like this which are why half the population snorts disdainfully at the pathetically obsessive left-wing culture of the arts. If you’re gonna put the boot into something, do it properly… e.g. “Urinetown”, which, appropriately enough, pisses all over “Walmartopia” from a substantial height.

In the end this show is, ironically, a Walmart amongst musicals: kinda cheap, bland, with no depth and no surprises. Find it in the “W” aisle, under “Whatever”.

Random Panda awards “Walmartopia” three out of ten pieces of bamboo.

(originally posted 2009)