New Musicals: A Guide to Modcom

Hair begat Salvation, and this new musical is an aesthetically retarded child. However, Salvation is instructive because it epitomizes a specific kind of phoniness that began with Hair and surfaced again in Promenade and the Living Theater. What knits these shows together is something that might be called Modcom.

Modcom is the commercial exploitation of modernity without regard for dramatic art. Modcom peddles the youth cult as a product. It is replete with cynical counterfeits of innocence, freedom and dissent. Enough evidence has now accumulated about how to put together a Modcom show. The rules:

Be plotless. It saves time. Nothing is quite so easy as not to write a book for a show. If plot insists on cropping up, be opaque. A story line that cannot be followed may not be exposed for the meaningless rot that it is. Always assume that the audience has the attention span of an agitated grasshopper.

Be lavish with four-letter words. This is the largesse of an impoverished mind. It is a hair transplant on a would-be manly chest.

Beslime the U.S. Find some degrading way to display the flag. State that the President is an idiotic monster of corruption. Repeat the Modcom pledge of disallegiance: this is a Government of the hypocrites, by the hypocrites, for the hypocrites.

Mock religion. This should preferably be the Catholic religion, since it is distinctly more theatrical, and not terribly retaliatory these days. Avoid knocking Judaism. After all, the bulk of New York theatergoers are Jewish, and if unduly nettled they might complain to B’nai B’rith. Protestants, like other apathetic majorities, may be savaged at will. Having established a reputation for being fearlessly irreverent, make sure that the cast chants a few Hare Krishnas before the evening is over so that the audience will know that the show is profoundly rooted in the mystical spirituality of the East.

Drug taking is a must. A Modcom producer ought never to forget that it is good box office to proffer simulated wickedness as an act of liberation. That is what is known as a low high. Many a boy’s only contact with opium was Dr. Fu Manchu, and the closest that many a playgoer gets to a whiff of pot is Modcom.

Be blatant about sex. Nudity is optional, but crudity is mandatory. Sex may be fun, but Modcom insists that its main purpose is to end the war in Viet Nam and provide a physically acceptable substitute for violence. Parting his beard for the press the other day, Beatle John Lennon put it this way: “All you’ve got to do to prove your manhood is lay a woman.” Group grope is very much in vogue and the choreographer who can animate a stageful of writhing, slithering, intertwined bodies stands a good chance of winning this season’s Laocoon Award.

Deafen the audience. Cudgel it severely about the ears with a blunt amplifying instrument. A hard-rock Modcom musical gives a theatergoer an acoustic third degree. His eardrums are refunded on the sidewalk. However, the test of a good musical score remains unvarying: not whether one can hum the songs but whether one can tell them apart. Hair has a beguilingly individuated score; Salvation does not.

Mingle with the audience. This takes a little effort, but it is well worth the time wasted. With no plot, the playgoer might get bored. This way he cranes his neck every which way and wonders if he is going to be kissed, prodded, or punched. It’s a good way to smell an actor, too, and the odor isn’t always as appealing as ham.

Excoriate Viet Nam. Even hawks, let alone parrots, have learned to deplore Viet Nam by now, so this particular arsenal of invective doesn’t stir up a Modcom audience as visibly as it once did. Time was when playgoers would weep on their armrests at the old “We won’t go” non-fight pep talk.

Apart from its manifold defects, Salvation, like all Modcom products, trades on the residual puritanism behind its ostensibly anti-puritan outlook. A people at ease with sexuality, and casually and thoroughly iconoclastic, would not pay good money to see an inept affirmation of a puerile paganism.