Urinetown: The Musical

by Mark Hollmann, Greg Kotis

Winner of three Tony Awards, including Best Book, Urinetown is a tale of greed, corruption, love, and revolution in a time when water is worth its weight in gold.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Musicals, Fiction, School, Humor

103 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Isabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

really not that well written but um. slay

[Kaion · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lampshading your own shitty writing doesn't make your writing less shitty, and it most certainly does not count as comedy. The completely nonsensical premise, one-dimensional characters, dumb plot, unimaginative setting, and lack of good songs* does not make this musical any less of a chore to get through.

Congrats, I get it. It's Brechtian. You have successfully alienated your audience.

*"Run Freedom Run" rises to the acceptably mediocre level. I struggle to name another number. Wait there's also the one-joke one about killing bunny rabbits.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick! How many science fiction-themed musicals can you name? ("The Wizard of Oz" and "Wicked" don't count.) I know, I know! Space Port! What do you mean you've never heard of Space Port, philistine?! (Admittedly that's an unproduced pastiche show I wrote about an erstwhile shuttle jockey with astraphobia.) So let's see, there's Little Shop of Horrors, Rocky Horror [Picture Show], Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds (sort of, inasmuch as this is more of a concert piece than traditional music theater), the utterly wretched Superman the Musical, and… and… and… um… well, on the jukebox front, I suppose there's Return to the Forbidden Planet and the rarissima adaptation of Earth Girls are Easy. And.... that's about it.

Why do I know all this? Because following the Museum of Science Fiction's inaugural Escape Velocity event, I was tasked with trying to find a show that we might co-produce at a subsequent con. We just showcased Rocky Horror, and it's probably Forbidden Planet we want, but as I have a cousin who works for Music Theater International, I thought I'd see what else is around. Turns out there's (not) much more in the offing. (Starmites or Bat Boy anyone?) She let me preview three MTI-controlled shows: Jekyll and Hyde, The Toxic Avenger, and Urinetown. Having now read each one and listened to their respective scores, I thought I might review them all at the same time. Each illuminates a different aspect of theatrical construction.

Jekyll and Hyde is an example of straightforward craft. It's a workmanlike vehicle in the family of melodramatic, semi-operatic spectaculars epitomized by Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Sweeney Todd, it just doesn't rise to their levels of quality, rather falling on the spectrum somewhere around Ca Ira.

JEKYLL: John. You remember my father… before… his mind and spirit were… extremely strong, weren't they?

UTTERSON (moved): He was the finest man I ever knew.

JEKYLL (to himself): I must do it… for his sake. [Act I, Scene 6]

Musical theater doesn't have much stage time to devote to character motivation. Given how long it takes to sing a single sentence, nuance is most often left to be conveyed by acting and underscoring. Even so, I expect more from a musical than an orphan, overt line reading. Worse, multiple numbers here devoted to shall-I-shan't-I handwringing get in the way of opportunities for good, chew-the-scenery romping, the latter compressed into a single montage number.

Whose fault was this? Leslie Bricusse, whose best work was written alongside Anthony Newley in the early 1970s, appears to have done a solid job adapting book and lyrics from Robert Louis Stevenson. Alas, his partner here was Frank Wildhorn. Remember The Civil War? The Scarlet Pimpernel? Bonnie and Clyde? What about Dracula the Musical? (And no, I am not making that last one up.) Wildhorn, who seems to specialize in schmaltzy ditties with unsurprising melodic patterns, can do nothing to buttress the weaknesses of the book. Jekyll may have been his lone theatrical success, though, thanks in no small part to the one or two numbers like Someone Like You. What more can I say? It's a serviceable, if silly, show featuring the titular man/monster in a backstory- and character-development-free love triangle with a fiancee and a hooker with a heart of gold. In the right production, it might even make it as high camp, but the show probably takes itself too seriously for that to work out with the effectiveness of a Miss Saigon.

By contrast, consider The Toxic Avenger, a show with no aspirations or pretensions even to mediocrity. Based on the eponymous B-Movie, this trashy trainwreck of a show succeeds or fails on the strength of the conviction that over-the-top performances, sets, and makeup can spin up lazy writing into the appearance of an effective postmodern satire. This may require a self-aware audience to dupe itself into mistaking adolescent shock-schlock for irreverence, but never you mind. We will boldly go where others wisely do not bother to tread.

MA: You stay away from my Melvin! For the first time he's successful and he's in love, even if it is with a blind librarian.

MAYOR: Blind librarian? Aha! So he's been hiding out with her!

MA: Me and my big mouth! …

MAYOR: I will find him, I will destroy him, and until I do, Tromaville is under Marshall Law! [sic]

MA: Marshall law! You're a fascist!

MAYOR: Well, you know what YOU ARE…

MAYOR/MA (alternately): You're a bitch! You're a slut! You're a liar! You're a whore! [Act 1, Scene 12]

This act closer is actually one of the wittier dialogues/songs. Theatergoers flocking to a show like Toxic Avenger are probably not looking for subtlety, and the best face I can put on this is to suggest the work aims for dadaism, more Ubu Roi-style slapstick than farce. It's a low bar easily and immediately hurdled from the energy derived in concentrating a cast of thousands into a quick-change quintet. This is a production-dependent phenomenon, and note that I've said little about the music or plot yet. Suffice it to say that even a pure Bon Jovi jukebox approach would have produced a stronger score, and as for the latter, well, if the broad outline of the book tracks that of Jekyll and Hyde, at least the story provides its cardboard characters something of an arc. Still, Toxic Avenger stands in stark contrast to and really helps one appreciate a show with equal irreverence and legitimate satirical bite, namely...

Urinetown: The Musical - Let me leave the plot synopsis to the author:

LITTLE SALLY: Say, Officer Lockstock, is this where you tell the audience about the water shortage?

LOCKSTOCK: What's that, Little Sally?

LITTLE SALLY: You know, the water shortage. The hard times. The drought. A shortage so awful that private toilets eventually become unthinkable. A premise so absurd that --

LOCKSTOCK: Whoa there, Little Sally. Not all at once. They'll hear more about the water shortage in the next scene.

LITTLE SALLY: Oh, I guess you don't want to overload them with too much exposition, huh?

LOCKSTOCK: Everything in its time, Little Sally. You're too young to understand it now, but nothing can kill a show like too much exposition.

LITTLE SALLY: How about bad subject matter?

LOCKSTOCK: Well --

LITTLE SALLY: Or a bad title, even? That could kill a show pretty good.

LOCKSTOCK: Well, Little Sally, suffice it to say that in Urinetown (the musical) everyone has to use public bathrooms in order to take care of their private business. That's the central conceit of the showww! [sic, Act I, Scene 1, page 2]

What's weird about Urinetown is less its central conceit than its hyper-self-conscious approach. It seems less a genuine social satire, than a parody of a Berthold Brecht/ Clifford Odets polemic, given that it uses direct address to the audience not to emphasize its subject matter, but rather to call attention to, criticize, and apologize for its class warfare theme and the stridency of its choral anthems. All the characters are farcical gee-whiz naifs or unteachable true believers, whose respective venality effects the same consequences, is equally sent up for ridicule, and which ultimately leads to a conclusion that does more to undermine all the precedent action than to cap it off. Urinetown's cynical messaging suggests that human frailty and stupidity render mutual consideration irrelevant, a futile exercise. Regardless of intent, poor execution and pervasive myopia doom all to destruction. Perhaps this is a commentary on incompetence, or maybe just another way of flipping the script on leftist playwrights. Whatever the show purports to "say" -- something surely dictated by performance -- the book (and score) remain strong enough to command attention and convey some sort of meaning. Every bit as flippant as Jekyll and Hyde is overearnest, Urinetown is a more solid entertainment.

[Sloan Doyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stupidly funny. Music is basic though. Minor keys can get old after a while and the few songs in major seem kind of random.

[Shane Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a delightful piece of theatre, especially for those who have a bit of background in theatre and for those who enjoy self-referential irony. Still, even the average theatre-goer looking for a bit of entertainment will find something to love in this piece.

Urinetown owes much to Brecht and his deliberate overplaying of theatrical and societal convention. The characters are all clearly "types" or "ideas" of people in the modern world. Without giving too much away, you have the personally motivated hero (Bobby), who is in love with the motively-conflicted Hope, who just happens to be the daughter of the main villain, Cladwell. They fight out a battle over the premise [essentially, drought and the collusion between industry and government has led to a policy of forcing people to pay to use public toilets to relieve themselves] along with the local law (Dickensianly-named Lockstock and Barrel) and corruption at the local level (Penny) and the "Legislature" level (Senator Fipp).

The (spoiler-free) plot may sound a tad confusing, but the writing is clear, telegraphing the characters and situations with a respectable Brechtian forthrightness.

There is also something endearing about this piece (something Brecht would shudder at ). There is an earnestness to it. It tries to set up the plot in a a hokey, presentational way, but the viewer does come to care for the hero and appreciate the inner conflict of characters like Penny.

Even the politics of the musical leave the audience a bit uncertain. As greedy as the uppity-ups may be, there seems to be a real problem the lower-downs may not understand. It references the troubling extremes of both crony corporatism and grassroots populism.

My advice? Just sit back and enjoy the theatrical ride. Root for the hero, boo the villain, but also be sure not to read TOO much into anything.

Above all, What I get from Urinetown is: think freely even if you can't pee freely.

[Eva B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I was to make a list of some things I hate in media, it would look something like this:
- Weak characters with a sole personality trait that is repeated again and again and again
- Lampshading to try and dodge questions of worldbuilding or themes so that they don't actually have to tackle them
- Oh-so-meta narration that thinks it's way more clever than it is
- Satire which has its head so far up its own ass that it can see when it opens its mouth
- Politics, worldbuilding, and themes that fall apart when placed under any sort of scrutiny.
Urinetown treats this like a bingo card, and baby, they're going for a blackout. I hate satire that comes off as the writer jerking themself raw over an idea they think is genius and I hate how no character had an ounce of development or likability and I hate how the ending was essentially "wow, maybe the exploitative capitalist wasn't so bad after all! the exploitation was for our own good, we should have listened!", which is a terminally late 90s/early 2000s take to have and I hate the bland rhyming in the songs. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief when it comes to dystopias and satire but I expect there to be some worldbuilding or explanation given as to WHY the world is the way that it is. Apologies for this being about to get icky, but the musical's content demands it: if you also have to pay to poop, why is there just a urinal that you have to pay for? If you don't have to pay to poop but do have to pay to pee, why do people not just lie to avoid having to pay to pee by saying they have to poop? What about periods? What about throwing up? At what age do you have to start paying to pee, and is there an age where you no longer have to? If you have some sort of UTI do they just kill you on the spot? Probably. I'm not accepting some hand-wavy "the audience gets distracted if you focus on too many topics!" line when your worldbuilding is incoherent. And did no one notice that everyone sent to Urinetown died? No one noticed the people being thrown off the roof or that one patch of the ground always looked clean that morning? Why are they executing them by throwing them off of buildings and then wasting precious water mopping up the blood and guts they leave on the ground when they could, like, take them away to a closed-off room no one goes in and shoot them or hang them instead? I hate self-aggrandizing satire so fucking much.

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Please note this review is for the Music Theatre International script.

Perfect example of how a good production can radically improve a mediocre script with a fresh interpretation. While originally written as satire, this is now something I can actually see happening. Despite being typically staged like we never left the dust bowl, it is easy to imagine our capitalistic society would turn into this once they could no longer ignore climate change. When not hiding behind jokes, it is truly a thought provoking and terrifying work.

Don’t get the MTI script though. It was riddled with spelling errors and seemed like entire sections had been cut. Characters that weren’t listed would pop up out of nowhere for a few lines of dialogue and then completely disappear again. The numbering of the score indicated several songs had been mangled as well.

[Tait Butterfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Urinetown was a musical I fell in love with over quarantine and it meant a lot to my sibling and I. Finally getting to read the script that backs up this amazing story of greed love comedy storytelling and teaches the hard moral that sometimes what you fight for might end up being bad. This show has so many gut busting lines but one line that isnt so funny but does say a lot about our own speech is ""We will look into the faces of our fellow man and see not only a brother, (To Tiny Tom) But a sister as well." Which is sad by Bobby Strong at the end of act I. I recommend this book to anyone who likes good stories.

[Kathy Hobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avid theatre goers will most likely get the hilarious jokes and references interlaced throughout the show. I do wish they had chosen a different title however, because it’s a fabulously entertaining show that I wish more high schools would produce. But they don’t because too many people judge a show by its cover/title. If you have any sense of humor, you will greatly enjoy this show! And ironically, especially compared to most modern musicals, most of the jokes are “clean” (besides the inevitable potty jokes).

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well...that was...something. I get the point that they were trying to make with this, but I just didn't care. About any of it. I didn't connect to or care about any of the characters. Several of the characters died and it made no difference to me. I had no connection to the material either - I read the whole thing and was actually relieved when it ended. Nothing grabbed my attention or made me want to see what happened next. I'm sure there's aspects to this that would be better with a stage performance. But based off of just reading it, I'm not much of a fan.

[Gracie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it! I listened along with the Original Broadway Cast Recording, and it was such a fun experience. I loved how the ending was not what you expected, and that characters from the show actually narrated it. However, I have to give it four stars because the ending felt a little rushed with the dialogue, and it seemed like the writers just needed to move the plot along. Overall, I really enjoyed it, and it's definitely one you should check out!

[Brianna (Breathe, hope, books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

LITTLE SALLY: What’s [Urinetown] like, Officer Lockstock?
LOCKSTOCK: Oh well, I can’t tell you that, Little Sally… Because it’s a secret, that’s why. Its power depends on mystery. I can’t just blurt it out, like “There is no Urinetown! We just kill people!” Oh no. The information must be oozed out slowly, until it bursts forth in one mighty, cathartic moment! Somewhere in Act Two. With everybody singing, and things like that.

Hilariously poignaint, as always.

[Sage · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in this show at my high school! People give this show a bad rep, but I honestly think it’s really good and really smart with a lot of its writing. On the surface it’s two hours of potty humor, but if you really look into it, it genuinely has a good message and heart. It works because the show knows exactly what it is and doesn’t try to be anything especially profound or evocative. I can understand why some people won’t like it, but I definitely think it’s worth a read :D

[Paul Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goddamn I love this play. I saw it live, performed it as a duo while I was in college, and used to listen to the original cast recording a lot. For a goofy premise that's built entirely around the laughs, the songs are actually really good. I had a photo copy of the entire play, but decided to pick up an actual copy as it's such a handsome book. Had a good time revisiting.

[Emily Giuffre · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the funniest musicals of a corrupt bureaucratic system that has a monopoly on public restrooms. Could be about anything else but this is on the use of public restrooms. Maybe not what you're thinking but if you have a chance to se the musical, do!

[Maria Daniela · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is indeed a privilege to pee. Wish I could see the dance numbers

[Kimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

probably the funniest play I've had to read for my page to stage class so far

[shinji · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is.......... fun....................... not sure how i feel..... an okay time

[Thomas]

Extremely funny how this piece of libertarian Malthusian propaganda took the theater world by storm.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have this while watching the musical. It just felt more fun.

[Brian McCann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saw its original Broadway cast and glad I could revisit it. Music is terrific as well.

There’s a detailed j trifurcation helping to put its inception into perspective.

[Madeleine]

Read for my costume design class and thought I liked where this was going. Ending is waaaay too bleak and nihilistic ESPECIALLY for a musical …call me traditional. I don’t get the point

[abi francis]

wow so good y’all should come watch the musical (i just want to reach my reading goal so ofc i include this) xxxx.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for class

[Rowan Whitmeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Iffy story but amazing songs. Definitely makes you think. Also is intertaining.

[Javier Fernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one's a real pisser!

[Madeline Rossell · Rating 2 out of 5]

The jokes about overused musical tropes were a real saving grace for the humor, but on that note I grew up watching Mel Brooks movies so I have a standard for prodical humor.

[Derek Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bizarre story, forgettable music and knowing tone that quickly gets old.

[Caz Janei · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok to be fair like a 2.5 like it’s fine idk it’s funny i think like the full production is obviously better than just reading it along to the soundtrack for a class

[Lily Turman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This show is a silly, but in a lovable way. It has quite a bit of meta throughout the show, making us question “What is Urinetown?”