STAGE REVIEW : Coming Back to ‘Earth’ : 1971 Soft-Rock Revue’s Detailing of Environmental Disaster Now Seems Stale

During its debut at South Coast Repertory in the winter of 1971, “Mother Earth” became one of the shows that helped put Orange County’s only professional resident theater on the map. Playgoers flocked to it. So did the critics, who raved.

“Mother Earth” went on tour. First stop San Francisco. More raves. Next stop Los Angeles. Ditto. The show eventually made it to Broadway, where it bombed in the fall of 1972. Ran all of three nights. By then, the producers had changed the original into a piece of glitz--according to Toni Tennille, who wrote the music--thus explaining the failure.

Now, two decades later, “Mother Earth” has been changed yet again by Ron Thronson, who wrote the original book and lyrics; the updated version opened Wednesday at Chapman University’s Waltmar Theater. By now, it’s hard to know what the excitement was all about in the first place.

As it currently stands, “Mother Earth” is a less-than-compelling, soft-rock revue consisting of two dozen songs strung together with nearly as many repetitive sketches about the disastrous state of the environment. Although the sentiments are politically and ecologically correct, the material has no real bite.

One of the better sketches in the first act, for instance, involves a fashion show of the latest in gas masks hosted by Heinrich of Hamburg wearing an “I love Germany” T-shirt--a cute idea but stale at best. Most of the sketches--like “Everybody Dies” or “Tox-Away Services”--make obvious points about air pollution and toxic poisoning that might have been startling years ago but now seem routine.

The material also lacks punch stylistically. Too many sketches indulge the same ironic format over and over. There’s not much novelty these days in the presentation of absurd commercials for deplorable products and services taken to their logical extremes. Both “Saturday Night Live” and Chernobyl have seen to that.

Thronson, a drama professor at Chapman, has staged “Mother Earth” with an eye for spectacle. Large images, from nature or man-made environments, are projected as a backdrop to reinforce the live numbers. The tiered set looks like a huge cave lined with pink, cotton-candy clouds. And the stage itself is illustrated with hemispherical maps of the world.

The large amateur cast is nothing if not hard-working. One standout is Pete Sepenuk, for his authoritative comic delivery. He teams up with Anastasia Coon for “Cal Worthless,” probably the evening’s best-performed sketch. Other standouts are Jolin Harrison and Adam Lawson for their singing.

The tunes themselves are pleasant though unexceptional. The lyrics--when not taken from poems by Blake (“Tiger, Tiger”) or Shelley (“Ozymandias”) or Coleridge (“Xanadu”)--aren’t much to write home about, either. If memory serves, a typical stanza from one song goes: “Save the trees for growing / Keep them from decay / Save the fish for swimming / Let the water not be gray.”

This “Mother Earth” has been recycled too often for its own good. Enough said.

‘Mother Earth’

A presentation of the Chapman University School of Communications Arts, Department of Communications. Book and lyrics by Ron Thronson. Music by Toni Tennille. Directed by Thronson. Musical director: Janet Smith. Choreographers: Christopher Zinovich and Nyla Newman. With Windy Anne Bunts, Anastasia Coon, Dave Dahl, Dorothy Drysdale, Jolin Harrison, Adam Lawson, Charla D. MasonC, J. Dustin Milberg, Teresa K. Pond and Pete Sepenuk. Set design by Craig Brown. Lighting by Ron Coffman. Costumes by Laura Deremer. Wigs by Cynthia Wilson. Continues Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Waltmar Theater, Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell, Orange. $7 and $5 (students and senior citizens). (714) 997-6812.