Mourning John in Song

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

AS AN ARTIST, YOKO ONO IS BEST known for marrying well. Although she has explored at least a dozen art forms and won plaudits in several -- in 1981, for example, she shared a Grammy with John Lennon for their album Double Fantasy, and in 1989 the Whitney Museum mounted a retrospective of her conceptual art -- her creative endeavors are overshadowed by her status as Lennon's widow. Ono seems reconciled to that reality. Indeed, she embraces it in New York Rock, an off-Broadway musical about coming to terms with the death of a loved one.

The key scenes -- a boy dealing with the slaughter of his mother, that boy grown up into a loving musician who is shot down, another boy coping with his father's grim disappearance -- are adapted from the Lennon saga. The parallels lend sporadic power to a sketchy plot with underdrawn characters and a maudlin message: the first act climaxes in a plea for universal brotherhood, the second in a ritual surrender of weapons by a multicultural array of street toughs.

While it is unlikely the show would have been staged but for the curiosity value of its author, Ono does have talent. Abler at providing catchy musical hooks than at building ballads to emotional peaks, she has assembled (and partly recycled) a likable score free of her trademark screeching. Most of the lyrics clank, but a few are funny or touching. A compelling group stomp called I Felt Like Smashing My Face in a Clear Glass Window deftly captures the nihilistic self-loathing of many street kids. At such moments, New York Rock seems pertinent. Otherwise, despite a production of great energy and inventiveness, sweet singing and infectious grins, it's a naive hippie-era flashback with less memorable tunes than Hair or Godspell. -- W.A.H. III