Nothings dates like novelty.  It is less than five years since the Tom O'Horganized version of Hair burst on the Broadway scene, initiating Middle American playgoers into the "tribal love-rock musical" that was to spread world-wide.

far from revolutionizing lyric theater, rock has failed more often than it has succeeded.  Hair composer Galt MacDermot has had the misfortune this season to write the music - some of it quite fetching - for two resounding flops, "Dude", and "Via Galactica".  Broadway's only current rock musical is "Jesus Christ Superstar", derived from a best-selling record album.

Now James Rado (coauthor of Hair) has followed that earlier triumph with a new musical, Rainbow (Orpheum).  It falls somewhere between a revue and a loosely constructed book musical.

Instead of being a Vietnam draftee, as in hair, the hero of rainbow is the ghost of a soldier, killed in Southeast Asia, who turns up on the other side of the rainbow.  In the second act, the soldier visits Washington, forgives the President for having caused his death, and has the satisfaction of hearing the latter call off the war.

Ironically, rainbow opened on the night Washington acknowledged renewed, large-scale bombing north of Vietnam's 20th parallel;  presidential reflexes die hard.

In the main, Rainbow is an ingeniously old-fashioned throwback to its Hair antecedents, involving a number of graduates from the earlier entertainment.  Its main attributes are its well-organized confusion, visual flamboyance, youthful exuberance, and Mr. Rado's abundant, various, and melodic score - 42 numbers all together!  The score and musical performance make up for an almost superfluous libretto.

In the fashion of such distractions, Rainbow is pacifist, vegetarian, ecumenical (Jesus and Buddha appear), unisexual, ridiculous, occasionally obscene, and generally uninhibited.  Childlike and childish in its approach, its only grotesque offense is its blasphemous treatment of Jesus in one number.

Otherwise, this musical and prismatic rainbow observes the traditions and conventions of its genre.  Designers james Tilton (sets and lights) and Nancy Potts (costumes) have created a visual treatment which once would have been considered wild but which usage has reduced to a norm.  The singing cast and the pit orchestra give an excellently robust performance of mr. Rado's admirably free-flowing score.

While Rainbow marks no particular maturation of an entertainment form, it meets the now well recognized demands of that form, and it meets them effectively.
 

Copyright Christian Science Monitor.