Reviewer: VLT’s Urinetown “will keep you on the edge of your seat”

By Daniel Buckwalter

First things first: The adorable Little Sally is correct when she tells Officer Lockstock near the end of the performance that this is not a “fun” musical, even with all the bubbly music.

“We’re all in Urinetown — a metaphysical place — where people learn to live in fear,” she says.

Yet Urinetown The Musical — which opened Jan. 22, had sold-out performances through the first weekend, and runs through Feb. 1 at the Very Little Theatre — gloriously accomplishes one thing: It will give you cathartic laughs at the absurdities that surround us and eat us up by the day.

Hey, if we’re doomed to live in the climate-change environment and all its consequences, we might as well have some laughs with it, and Urinetown delivers.

The musical was co-written by Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann and had its New York City premiere in 2001.

Directed at VLT by Michael Watkins, Urinetown explores the grotesque transformation of a slice of society that has endured decades of drought to the point where, under the auspices Urine Good Company (UGC), you have to pay an ever-increasing amount of money simply to use public bathrooms.

One of them, Public Amenity No.9, is the centerpiece of the musical. It’s the only public restroom in this, the bad part of town. Only the destitute live here, and it’s tough for the characters to scrape up the money to simply relieve themselves. And don’t you dare think of peeing in the bushes. There is punishment for that, and it’s real. After all, even the poorest section of town must be free of odor, UGC declares, and “the stink years” before the company’s founding are gone.

Still, Urinetown will keep you on the edge of your seat for the next comedic line, and the main characters have their share.

There’s the evil and insufferable Caldwell B. Cladwell (played with fortitude by Jonathan Matthews) who runs UGC as his fiefdom, paying off police and Senator Fipp (Jim Arscott), all the while keeping an eye on his planned escape route to Rio when Urinetown collapses.

There’s Penelope Pennywise (Erica Jean), who is the administrator of Public Amenity No. 9 and who may have had a romantic liaison with Cladwell during the stink years.

The hero is Bobby Strong (Matthew Arscott), who rallies the sewer people to take over UGC and give the residents of Urinetown the freedom and dignity to relieve themselves in grace. He and others will pay a price for this.

Strong’s love interest — and this is a musical, so there’s almost always a love interest to follow — is Hope Cladwell (Amber Fiedler). She is Caldwell B. Cladwell’s college-age daughter who is not streetwise by any means, but she is goodhearted and bubbling with hope.

She also has a strong singing voice, and it was a pleasure to listen to her character sing “Follow Your Heart” with Bobby Strong in Act I as they declared their love for each other. Another memorable voice belongs to Erica Jean — a real belter à la Broadway if ever there was one — as Penelope Pennywise.

This being a musical, Act II featured several songs from the poor people in the vicinity of Public Amenity No. 9, including “Snuff that Girl,” led by Hot Blades Harry (Sawyer Kavaney) and Little Becky Two Shoes (Alexandra Melconian), and “Run, Freedom, Run,” led by the character Strong.

Any discussion of Urinetown the Musical is not complete without mentioning the two narrators — Officer Lockstock (Cody Mendonca) and Little Sally (Dusty Stratton). Judging by the VLT’s production, these two would make a good comedy team for the road.

We live in the climate-change environment that is, I fear, here to stay, and Urinetown the Musical (composed more than 20 years ago) does a wonderful job of holding a mirror up to all of us, to see the human cost of climate change’s damage. It is immense, and it will only grow more acute.

As Little Sally noted, “this is not a ‘fun’ musical,” even with its bubbly music, yet it will make you laugh, and we all need that now.

Editor’s Note: Urinetown the Musical opened at Broadway’s Henry Miller Theatre and ran from Sept. 20, 2001 through Jan. 18, 2004, racking up 25 previews and 965 performances. I was lucky enough to see it back then — and it still ranks among the best Broadway shows I have seen — but I hasten to say that VLT’s production with its talented and gifted local actors/singers pleased me just as much, and the standing ovation the local troupe received could not have been more appropriate.