The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: NYCC Encores! production of Urinetown
By Ross
“Urine Good Company”, reads the sign on the back wall of the New York City Center stage, punning us into their Encores! production of Urinetown, the musical. It’s a show I saw decades ago, opening on Broadway a little more than a week after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. Harrowing times to be in the city, but somehow this show rose up and became much loved and admired. I remember seeing Urinetown and loving the spunk and spark it set forth on that Broadway stage, delivering such a strong fun satirical message about society, community, and our way of interacting with each other and the world we live within. It was transgressive and deliberate, and a whole heap of fun, even as it gloriously sings its way into a dark oblivion in the end.
This isn’t a happy musical, we are told by the Urinetown cop, played mischievously well by Greg Hildreth (Broadway’s Company), who, as the show’s narrator, talks a tough talk to the wide-eyed wonder that is Little Sally, embodied wonderfully well by the young Pearl Scarlett Gold (Broadway’s Leopoldstadt). But he solidly stands by, and watches the world turn, drastically, around, leading us and guiding us and her through the rulebook of musical theatre. It’s a show about privilege, greed, rebellion, and the blindness in the way we operate, laced with an anti-establishment edge by composer and co-lyricist Mark Hollman (The Sting), that mixes gospel and Bernstein with a dribble and drop of Kurt Weill. And it works, generally, very well, even with its side-winking jokey book and lyrics by Greg Kotis (The Sting), mainly because of this Encores! production’s seasoned cast of utter pros delivering the highs and lows with such exuberant style and wise-cracking glee that we can’t stop grinning from ear to ear.
Delivering solidly on its sketch comedy roots, the framing around politics and ecology is pretty perfectly timed with the world that awaits us outside. “We’re fucked,” we are told, basically throughout the show, and there’s no denying that this is the overall feeling in and outside that wide-staged theatre. Yet, there’s no way to look away. With that spectacular Encores! Orchestra laid out behind a row of yellow porta-potties, designed strongly by Clint Ramos (Broadway’s Slave Play), with lighting by Justin Townsend (Broadway’s Death Becomes Her) and sound by Nevin Steinberg (Broadway’s The Notebook), music director Mary-Mitchell Campbell (NYCC Encores! production of Oliver!) magnificently conducts the orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin (Broadway’s Once Upon a Mattress) deliciously up into the highest rafters. We get wrapped up in the telling of a future when water is so scarce and so valuable that citizens of this unnamed town have to line up and pay to relieve themselves. And naturally, the elite reap the rewards. Just don’t ask Little Sally about the flaws and details of the text, you won’t get very far, especially with the police narrator around.
Sound metaphorically similar? It turns out the city’s government, basically owned and operated by the CEO of Urine Good Company, played dastardly well by Rainn Wilson (NBC’s “The Office“), has a monopoly on the “Privilege to Pee“. He maintains his power and wealth by fleecing the poor with their own nature’s need to pee, and by constantly raising the fees for the use of his toilets. this is all in response to something referred to as the ‘stink years‘ – something that feels like this orange monster moment in the not-so-United States. And by controlling both the politicians, embodied handsomely by Josh Breckenridge (Broadway’s Swept Away) as Senator Fipp, and the police, headed up by the corrupt Officer Lockstock (Hildreth) and his sidekick; the obedient, and loving (in his own way) Officer Barrel, played adorably well by Christopher Fitzgerald (Broadway’s Spamalot).
Directed with joyful playfulness by Teddy Bergman (Broadway’s KPOP) with festive choreography by Mayte Natalio (Broadway’s Suffs) and delightful costuming by Sophia Choi (Broadway’s Cult of Love), Urinetown delivers it all with a wink and a grimace, especially the presentation of the wonderfully gifted Jordan Fisher (Broadway’s Sweeney Todd) as the hero of the day, Bobby Strong, a big-hearted lad who works at Public Amenity #9, run hard by Penelope Pennywise, passionately and powerfully portrayed by Keala Settle (“The Greatest Showman“). Settle sings as powerfully as she runs her toilets, not bending to pleads and promises, especially, on that one fateful day when Strong’s poor father, fantastically portrayed by the elastic Kevin Cahoon (Broadway’s Shucked), after failing to come up with the pennies needed, relieves himself on the street corner. As quick as can be, Officer Lockstock takes him away to “Urinetown”, a metaphoric place that is kept secret from the masses, but not from us for very long.
It’s a step too far for our good hero, especially after butterflies of the heart are set free when he happens to meet the naive and loverly daughter of Cladwell. Hope Cladwell, gloriously embodied with glee by the wonderfully gifted and very funny Stephanie Styles (RT’s Kiss Me, Kate), believes in the world she is a part of, but not for long. Love and rebellion quickly tie her up in complications, and even if her wrists are bound, the girl can still clap as strongly with her two extended feet as any rebel can, and wheel herself around the stage to the joy-filled music and beat.
There’s so much fun to be had in the Encores! production of Urinetown, especially in the side bits like the subservient Mr. McQueen, giddily portrayed by the very funny Jeff Hiller (off-Broadway’s Bright Colors And Bold Patterns), and the hilariously delivered Breckenridge who shines and steals almost everyone of his scenes with perfectly timed comic physicality. The jokes swing out like gags from “The Carol Burnett Show“, finding their aim and not missing their mark. I can see why this show was needed and adored back in the day, but I’m also not so sure it stands the test of time. This is true even (or maybe because of) our current world burning itself down all around us. It’s possible I needed a happy ending more than ever this week and this month after an onslaught of overly horrible news cycle stories that keep hitting the airwaves every single gosh darn day since January 20th. i wanted to love it the way I did, back in the day, and I will admit that during the show’s big gospel number, powerfully delivered by Fisher, I was in it completely. But after the curtain went down on Urinetown, I sorta just shrugged and wondered if I remembered it all as well as I thought I did.
