MTH’s low-flow approach serves Urinetown well

November 11, 2015

Liz Cook,

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Musical Theater Heritage tackles an unlikely marriage of self-conscious parody and Malthusian catastrophe in Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann’s Urinetown: The Musical.

The meta-theatrical digs start early, as narrators Officer Lockstock and Little Sally (a Dickensian guttersnipe) unite to rattle off a list of musical death warrants: too much exposition, bad subject matter, aimless focus. “A bad title, even,” Sally pipes up. “That could kill a show pretty good.”

Not so, Little Sally. Urinetown‘s title did not, in fact, prevent the show — a pastiche of winking Broadway tropes and familiar song structures, lined with vaudevillian dad jokes (Ms. Cladwell! What an unexpected surprise!/Is there any other kind?) — from earning a three-year stint on Broadway, a national tour and three Tony Awards.

Urinetown ushers us into a dystopian future in which a 20-year drought has made private toilets a relic of the past. Much of the first act plays outside Public Amenity No. 9, a pay-to-pee privy run by the street-toughened Pennywise. Poor residents have a strong incentive to cross their legs and hunt for coins — freeloaders and shrub-waterers earn a one-way ticket to “Urinetown,” a punishment as mysterious as it is permanent. Enter a class war between the full-bladdered poor and the upper-crust managers of Urine Good Company, led by magnate Caldwell B. Cladwell, who control the means of micturition.

Revolution begins in earnest when Mr. Cladwell’s daughter, Hope, returns from college and falls in love with Bobby Strong, a fire pot whose father was shipped to Urinetown after an unsanctioned pee. As Hope tries to navigate shifting allegiances, Strong leads a rebellion against UGC and the sneering Officer Lockstock (Don Richard).

Richard was onboard for the original Broadway production, and he hasn’t lost any steam over the years. His Lockstock is the comedic engine, equal parts dimwitted and cocksure. Jeff Berger is believable as his affectionate lackey, and Julie Shaw lends a husky noir purr to gatekeeper Pennywise.

As Cladwell, Kip Niven is Monopoly’s Rich Uncle Pennybags come to life. Niven plays the tycoon as more cynical than conniving, sounding almost grandfatherly as he berates Hope for neglecting her studies on mass manipulation. The hammy “Mr. Cladwell” is a lower-energy tune here than in some productions, but Niven preens like a parade marshal nonetheless.

Janet Wiggins has some nice moments as Hope — the intro bars of “I See a River” showcase her expressive singing — but her performance feels a bit thin, even for a naïve archetype. Tyler Fromson is more successful as the principled Bobby, knowing when to draw from the well of brassy show tunes and (crucially) when to pump the brakes.

The ensemble is no less dependable, with especially crisp work from Shelby Floyd (who seems, at times, to be channeling Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove). And two supporting characters make some of the strongest contributions. Natalee Merola is brilliant as Little Sally, one foot firmly in parody and the other in the world of the play. Her childish drawl feels more earnest than affected, and her scenes with Richard are some of the funniest in the show. Ryan Hruza earns similar style points for his Jacob Marley–inspired portrayal of the defiant Old Man Strong. Hruza and director Sarah Crawford join forces for one of the play’s most clever sequences, a “haunting” a la sickly spotlight and canned fog.

Crawford knows how to shape a line and score a laugh. The show is peppered with impeccably timed gags, from the not-so-haunting to something as simple as a shared sigh. She’s a key part of Musical Theater Heritage’s magic. Her blocking is so creative and her casts so expressive that you hardly notice the mics and the music stands.

But there are mics and music stands, and a few choices flout that constraint to the show’s detriment. Actors frequently move between mics or turn their heads away midphrase, causing the volume to waver like a poorly tuned radio. (John Hileman’s sound design is top-notch, but he’s not a magician.)

As you might expect from the premise, Urinetown‘s antics can occasionally ring hollow. Literal potty humor and musical lampoons, while great fun, make a better sketch than they do a whole show. Kotis and Hollmann try to temper this a bit in the second act, turning the satire sour.

Sure, crony capitalism takes heat, but the would-be revolutionaries get as much of a dressing-down as their corporate counterparts. Idealism falls apart in the face of deprivation. Scarcity proves to be a greater enemy than any corporation. Cladwell may have been corrupt, the playwrights suggest, but, hey, at least he staved off the drought.

If that sounds like a cynical note to land on, it is. But it’s the right cap to a show that turns out to be more about the lemon than about the lemonade. The show’s unsustainable land of plenty — a mirror of our own — makes a throwaway gag loom large: “Gosh, Daddy, I never realized large, monopolizing corporations could be such a force for good in the world!”