“Urinetown”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - January 2012

“A hit! A very palpable hit!”
- William Shakespeare

What a great production of a truly great musical! The Ghent Playhouse stage is truly awash with talent as this energetic cast – which skillfully and seamlessly blends a bunch of eager and talented youngsters with the usual middle-aged crowd that keep the Playhouse going – under Sky Vogel’s expert direction prove what a genuine classic Urinetown has become in a mere ten years.

I first saw and reviewed the show at The Theater Barn in 2006. At that time it was clear to me that the show was all about oil and our unsustainable dependence on fossil fuel. This time I got a completely different message and the show seems even more timely and relevant than it had previously. The ability of material to stand the test of time and continue to speak to and move audiences is the hallmark of great theatre.

Actually, Urinetown was written at a fascinating juncture in American culture. First devised in 1999, it was all set to open on Broadway on September 13, 2001. Talk about BAD timing!! That the official opening night occurred only a week later with only one line of dialogue changed to suit the new American reality was astonishing. So it’s a pre-9/11 show that only entered the larger cultural consciousness post-9/11. (Urinetown did have a successful off-Broadway run pre-9/11, but a show is not considered “set” until its official Broadway opening, after which union rules actually prevent the creative team from making any changes.) The audience for whom it was written had ceased to exist by opening night and whatever messages Mark Hollmann (music and lyrics) and Greg Kotis (lyrics and book) had intended to convey were immediately morphed by the changing world into which the show was launched.

The Ghent Playhouse selects its seasons by soliciting show submissions from aspiring directors – I have one posted on GailSez right now for their 2012-2013 season – so a show and director arrive at the Playhouse as a package deal. Vogel was memorable as the villian, Caldwell B. Cladwell, in the 2006 Theater Barn production, which I named one of my most memorable musicals of the decade in 2009. So clearly there was from the outset a strong bond between the director and his material. Vogel wanted to direct this show and he wanted to make as wonderful, if not more so, than his 2006 experience.

Even after a decade of success and multiple regional productions, I know there are still people who cannot quite bring themselves to buy a ticket to a show called Urinetown, but as Shakespeare so poignantly put it: “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” Actually, let’s not bring the question of smell into this equation because, as a name, Urinetown quite literally stinks, and I think potential audience members worry that the theatre will too. (It doesn’t.) But if Hollman and Koltis had called this dark musical where the hero dies well before the final curtain something happy like, oh, say, Carousel, they would have done their audience and themselves a disservice. As Officer Lockstock tells Little Sally on more than one occasion, “This is not a happy musical.”

Set in a mythical future where worldwide drought has rendered individually plumbed homes an impossibility, the water and the appliances that use them – like flush toilets – are all controlled by a giant conglomerate called Urine Good Company (UGC) headed by the evil Caldwell B. Cladwell (Tony Pallone), who spends many of his millions buying of politicians. He has just bought himself an impressive fee hike at the municipal “amenities,” all of which are “pay as you go.”

The show opens at Public Amenity #9, run by Penelope Pennywise (Amy Fiebke) and her assistant Bobby Strong (Michael Meier). The poor – including Bobby’s parents Old Man Strong (Tracy Trimm) and Josephine “Ma” Strong (Kathy Marin Wohlfield), the street urchin Little Sally (Eleah Jayne Peal), the immensely pregnant Little Becky Two-Shoes (Christina Smith), Soupy Sue (Blessilda Nacleno), Tiny Tony (Arielle Lant), Hot-Blades Harry (Zack Marshall), Robby the Stockfish (Colleen Lovett), and others – queue up to relieve themselves as Officer Lockstock (Mark “Monk” Schane-Lydon) and Officer Barrell (Mark Lant) patrol. But Old Man Strong can neither pay nor wait, and so answers the call of nature al fresco, which promptly gets him carted off to “urinetown” – a place of punishment made even more sinister by the mystery with which it is shrouded.

Devastated by his inability to help his father, Bobby foments a popular uprising, but not before he falls in love with Cladwell’s beautiful daughter, Hope (Kaitlin Pearson), freshly graduated from the world’s most expensive university and ready to start her climb up the corporate ladder as a copy/fax girl at daddy’s firm. By the time Bobby realizes who his beloved’s father is, the rebellion has reached a fever pitch and he and his comrades take Hope hostage as they flee from Cladwell and the law.

And that’s the end of Act I. I would tell you what happens, but that would spoil the surprise. Just remember, this is not a happy musical.

As the juvenile leads, Meier and Pearson not only look lovely but sound great too. I am continually impressed by Meier who has a fine singing voice and is becoming more and more skillful at making his height work for him in a variety of roles where it could be a hinderance. Here he and Vogel have fun by putting Pearson up several steps to come face to face, and face to bosom, with Meier.

Fiebke is always a pleasure to see, and here she does a dead-on parody of the Brechtian Bad Girl. The influence of Brecht & Weill on Hollman and Kotis was even more strongly evident to me at this viewing than it had been in 2006. I understand that Hollman has stated that his music for Pennywise was intended to resemble Weill’s for Leocadia Begbick in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which is pushing the level of homage well past Lotte Lenya. Sadly, most American audiences are unfamiliar with Weill’s work with Brecht, which I have always considered some of his most brilliant compositions, but if you have to make do with loving imitations, Hollman and Kotis are light years better than Kander and Ebb, and Fiebke is very good indeed.

I was quite astonished to read in my program that Peal is now a college student. I have literally watched her grow up on stage, and it is paradoxical that my first time seeing her in an adult leading role she is playing a child. Little Sally is the heart and soul of the show, and Peal’s performance anchors the proceedings and sets the tone perfectly. She and the always enjoyable Mark Schane-Lydon made a great team in their narration bits, and he led the cast forcefully in the “Cop Song.”

Marshall is another youngster I’ve watched grow up on area stages, and I was greatly impressed with his dancing here, and with Jimmy Roberston’s choreography which piled a lot of action onto the tiny Ghent stage. Marshall was obviously having a wonderful time playing the sadistic Hot-Blades Harry, and he and Smith brought the house down as the led the cast in Act II opener Snuff That Girl. Smith, who I gather is in real-life a mild-mannered mommy, obviously takes fiendish delight in playing naughty girls. Her Becky Two-Shoes was a fearsome look at Lucy Van Pelt (who she played at Ghent last spring) all grown up and gone horribly wrong!

Another young woman who knocked my socks off was Rebecca Gardner, cross dressing to play Cladwell’s male flunky McQueen. She gets to wear bunny ears and a gray flannel suit. How marvelous!

Pallone was fine but could have been a little more unctuous as Cladwell. Where’s Sky Vogel when you need him? Oh, right, he was pacing in the back of the theatre like any good director on opening night. And he had the wisdom not to try to direct and act simultaneously.

Oh, I could go on and on about this cast. What fun they seemed to be having up there! They knew they had it right and they couldn’t wait to share it all with a live audience. Catherine Schane-Lydon and the band – Christopher St. Clair, bass, Neal Berntson, drums, Erin White, reeds, and Matt Coviello, trombone – who must have been pretty squashed in that little cage just off stage right, played Hollman’s tricky score with panache.

Bill Visscher and Tom Detwiler have designed and built a really filthy, crappy looking set, which is just what Urinetown calls for. I only had one quibble with the lighting design by Grace Fay and Bill Camp, and that was when a series of rapid transitions were not timed absolutely perfectly, a situation that will probably resolve itself in subsequent performances. And Joanne Maurer’s costumes were, as always, perfection.

If you’ve never seen Urinetown, take courage and go to Ghent because you won’t find better in a “professional” production and the $18 ticket price is unbeatable for a full-scale musical. If this is already one of your favorites – GO! – you’ll love it.

The Ghent Playhouse production of Urinetown runs January 20 through February 5 at the playhouse, located at 6 Town Hall Place (on the corner of Route 66 and Town Hall Place) in Ghent, NY, across from the Ghent Fire House. The show runs two and a half hours and is suitable for ages 10 and up. The performances are scheduled for Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets are $18, $15 for Friends of Ghent Playhouse. For reservations call 518-392-6264. More information www.ghentplayhouse.org

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