Rainbow is an idealistic 60s peace-and-love rock musical turned unpleasantly aggressive by its mismatch with the times.  Its hero, a young man named Man, is dressed in an army uniform and wants to know why he was killed in Vietnam.  He is surrounded by a bunch of fantastically done up characters who declare themselves to be the Rainbeams and then differentiate into a goofy, sincere Jesus, a stripper, parents, Buddha, two girls (one white, one black), the president and his family, and a wizard who does a few magic tricks and wields a silver-glittered pool cue.  The show is an almost non-stop succession of high-powered production numbers, the cast blasting them out with an exhausting hard-sell enthusiasm.  The lyrics try to be clever without troubling to make sense;  sometimes when they are intelligible they are embarrassing or insulting, as when the cast belts "I love you, I love you" at the audience - though in fact the show is noticeably unattuned to its audience, too hopped up in its own energy to register how or whether it's getting through.

Some of the songs and some of the performers are very good - Janet Powell singing "What Can I Do For You?", Kay Cole, Dean Compton, Marie Santell, Michael Arian, Philip A.D.  It's the ideas and the cumulative effect that are nerve-plucking.  Gregory V. Karliss is impressively accomplished as Man, yet the character remains unaffecting.  The climax, his confrontation with the President, is as follows:

PRES:  I know you now, you are my equal.
MAN:  Why was I killed in Vietnam?
PRES:  Peace is honorable.  If it was my fault I'm sorry.  Forgive me.
MAN:  I forgive you.
PRES:  (tears in his eyes) I declare this war at an end.

Then the President is dressed in rainbow silks and the whole world floats up into Rainbow dreamland.
 

Copyright The Village Voice.