Word: urinetown
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...this really the title?” That this phrase is on promotional materials and souvenirs means a person can only be in one special location—Urinetown. Not the place, of course, the musical. This musical is a hot commodity; a placard outside the theater even proclaims it the second hottest ticket in town (after The Producers, of course). With the added support of a glowing review from the New York Times, not to mention an improbable, inspiring story of success, one enters the show with high expectations. Though the show takes a few musical numbers to navigate...
...Urinetown, the citizens of the local town must do their private business at public bathrooms which charge a fee. As the show’s narrator explains, “That is the central conceit of the show.” It should be noted that on the word “show” he strikes the pose of a chorine delivering her big line in an old-style Follies; this sets the tone for an evening in which musical theater, particularly that which attempts a social conscience, serves as the focus of blunt, but hysterical, satire...
...course, Urinetown does have its own social conscience—near as I could tell its underlying point has something to do with over-consumption of resources and the unsustainable lifestyle of man. And yet, the show’s point isn’t quite the point. Every plot twist is an opportunity to mock a theatrical device or style of theater. Urinetown is possessed of such charm and generates such tremendous good will that even old jokes like the deliberate misunderstanding of idiomatic language seem fresh and welcome
Whereas Larson's show is sweet and cuddly, Urinetown is blunt and in your face. This Brechtian fable--a sellout hit in its tiny off-off-Broadway theater that is moving to Broadway in August--is set in a city where the water shortage is so dire that private toilets have been outlawed. The play overdoses a bit on winking self-references ("Everything in its time, little Sally," one character says to another. "Nothing can kill a show like too much exposition"), and the promise of sharp political satire is lost on the way to a generic cartoon...