Playwrights: Mark Hollman and Greg KotisAt: Shubert Theatre, 22 W. Monroe,
Phone: (312) 902-1400; $26-$75.
Runs through: Dec. 21
Urinetown is the best damn score Kurt Weill has written in 50 years. Weill, the composer of Mac the Knife, Surabaya Johnny and September Song, died in 1950. My remark is intended to honor Weill and the authors of Urinetown, former Chicagoans Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, who consciously emulate Weill, his early collaborator Bertolt Brecht, and their American admirer Marc Blitzstein. Like Weill, Hollmann is a composer with classical training who writes serious music that sounds like popular song. The lyrics by Hollmann and Kotis, and the book by Kotis, reflect the didactic Brecht-Weill theater pieces that excoriated corrupt government and greedy capitalists, and wrapped revolution in an entertaining package.
But Hollmann and Kotis also embrace the conventions of Broadway musicals, which they cheekily honor and mock. Urinetown is ironic, sending up its theatrical and musical forebears even as it constantly pays homage to them. John Carrafa's musical staging spoofs everything from West Side Story to Fosse to A Chorus Line to Les Miserables, while the narration by Officer Lockstock and Little Sally joyously makes fun of musicals such as Urinetown that have 'happy music' but sad stories.
Urinetown is a musical comedy with plenty of laughs, but the hero and villain both die terrible deaths and the overall metaphor of the show is dark. It is up to each viewer to decide how serious Hollmann and Kotis are. At the very least, they've coated the wormwood with sugar (as Leonard Bernstein remarked about Blitzstein's opera, Regina).
The story of Urinetown—which might have come straight from Brecht or American theater of the 1930s—tells of oligarchic greed exploiting ecological devastation. When a disastrously shrinking water table makes it impossible to flush toilets at will, a 'fee-for-pee' system is instituted controlled by an evil capitalist, a bought legislature and brutal police. A populist revolt throws together Hope Cladwell, the capitalist's daughter, and Bobby Strong, the young revolutionary leader.
Hollmann's hummable tunes range from pseudo-Weill to pseudo-gospel, with a couple of Broadway belt numbers, a big ballad and several song-and-dance struts that would be at home in a Jerry Herman show. They are delivered by a fine touring company, under the precision baton of musical director Jason DeBord (fronting a five-piece band). The lead players are tall and elegant Ron Holgate as evil Caldwell B. Cladwell, veteran leading lady Christiane Noll as Hope Cladwell, sturdily built and boyish Charlie Pollock as Bobby Strong, rubbery Tom Hewitt as swivel-hipped Officer Lockstock and Meghan Strange as Little Sally.
But there's a fly in this good ointment: the book scenes are slow and ham-handed, as if the audience won't get the tongue-in-cheek style unless every moment is overstated. On opening night, the leaden pauses killed half the jokes. There's no excuse for this. The satiric edge of Urinetown depends on deadpan breeziness, with exaggeration saved for special moments and the musical numbers. Director John Rando needs to come in pronto to clean up the pacing.
Urinetown must be kept fresh; for its message of oligarchic rule distorting the law and manipulating citizenry by fear and intimidation is as current as today.
