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| Monique Van Vooren, Eric Lang. |
MAN ON THE MOON [Musical/Romance/Science-Fiction] B/M/LY: John Phillips; D: Paul Morrissey; S: John J. Moore; C: Marsia Trinder; L: Jules Fisher; P: Andy Warhol i/a/w Richard Turley; T: Little Theatre; 1/29/75-2/1/75 (5)
Keitha McClean called this musical produced by pop culture
artist Andy Warhol “excruciatingly bad,” and Brendan Gill dubbed it “totally
mindless. On opening night, it produced more excitement in the house, where a
glittery audience of the Beautiful People attended in full regalia, than on the
stage, where the amateurish, low-budget, low-talent show was enacted. Some
thought there were a few decent songs in the 22-number show, but these were
embedded in a script and production of egregious banality performed by a
largely inadequate cast in a setting Clive Barnes called “cheap-looking.” John
Phillips, a singer formerly of the bigtime pop-rock group the Mamas and the
Papas, wrote the entire thing.
The story, which Martin Gottfried considered “infantile,”
has to do with a mad German scientist, Dr. Bomb (Harlan S. Foss), who wants to
bomb the moon and thereby alter its course so it will throw the planet of Canis
Minor into darkness. The astronaut, Ernie Hardy (Eric Lang), and the rocketship charged with the
mission, land instead on Canis Minor, to which the female love interest, Angel (Genevieve
Waite), and her parents, Venus (Monique Van Vooren), and King Can (Dennis Doherty), were exiled
years before by Bomb. The astronaut and the girl fall in love at first sight. And so on.
In John Simon’s estimation, Man on the Moon was “a crashy, campy, lobotomized bore from
beginning to end.” In other words, to borrow a character’s name, a bomb.
