Urinetown: the Musical holds a certain historical pride of place—of the bizarre off-Broadway tranfers that dominated Musical Theatre in the 2000s, it was the first to reach Broadway. Hedwig and the Angry Inch had already been turned into a film adaptation by this point, thus greatly increasing the size of its cult following, but it wouldn’t play Broadway until 2014. And other early crossover titles (like Bat Boy: the Musical), while they may have attained international success on a certain scale, would have been inconceivable as propositions for Broadway—at least before Urinetown broke that barrier.
The first examples of a trend are seldom the most perfect, and Urinetown is undoubtedly flawed. It tells the deliberately absurd story of a dystopian society’s brutally enforced use of pay toilets in order to cope with an extreme twenty-year drought. It is the very picture of early-2000s self-reflexive irony on Broadway…its narrator figures, while also characters within the story, debate the merits and appeal of the show they’re in, point out plot holes, and philosophize on the nature and structure of the Musical Comedy as an art form. The jokes are a bit hit-or-miss–unfailingly clever but not always as funny as they seem to think they are. And while the show is nowhere near as puerile as the premise makes it sound, there are times when the toilet humor does get to be a bit much.
On the plus side, the score is fascinating. There are stirring anthems (“Look At the Sky”, “Run, Freedom, Run”, “I See a River”) and lovely ballads (“Follow Your Heart” and “Tell Her I Love Her”)—all played for laughs within the context of the show, of course. There are also several clever parodies of Broadway classics—the first-act finale spoofs Les Miserables, the second-act opening “What Is Urinetown?” uses the Jewish-Russian musical sounds of Fiddler on the Roof, and the sadistic “Snuff That Girl” sounds like a cross between “Too Darn Hot” and “Cool”. The original cast was quite strong (Hunter Foster made his Broadway debut in the original production), but the one who stole the show was the great John Cullum as the villainous Caldwell B. Cladwell. Cullum received the gleefully malicious “Don’t Be the Bunny”, but also the irresistible song-and-dance routine “Mr. Cladwell”.
Probably the biggest problem with the show is that there is virtually no emotional involvement…this is a Candide-like show, a satirical fable where we’re not really supposed to care what happens to the characters. There are some heavy-handed waterworks turned on late in Act Two to help set up the show’s startling twist ending, but the more savvy theatre-goers will see through them even before the twist is revealed.
And speaking of that twist ending—it’s brilliant. To put it succinctly, it turns out the villain’s authoritarian measures really were necessary to maintain the town’s water supply, and the ‘freedom’ brought about by the revolutionaries results in the river drying up and everyone dying of thirst. Indeed, it turns out in the end that Caldwell B. Cladwell wasn’t a villain…he was our hero all along. A cynical and opportunistic anti-hero, admittedly, but still the closest thing this show has to a “good guy”. The real “bad guys” are Bobby Strong, the angry young revolutionary leader who is fighting for a system he knows is unsustainable (“Don’t give us tomorrow/Just give us today”, goes one lyric), and Hope (Cladwell’s daughter, who ends up taking over the revolution after Bobby dies and murdering her own father), an insane woman who literally can’t discern the difference between slogans and reality. It’s no accident that this character is named Hope…the show’s primary message may be “Giving people the freedom to do what they want isn’t always the right answer”, but it also seems to be saying “If you blindly follow hope, she will only lead you to disaster”.
The combination of the score and the ending (and the insightful and eye-opening points it raises), have kept this show fondly remembered as a minor classic despite its flaws, and its historical importance cannot be disputed. And if its real long-term function had more to do with opening doors for other, better shows than with its own merits, that’s still more than enough reason to be glad it exists.