This school year, VPM Drama is performing the Broadway musical Urinetown, but don’t let the name drive you away. Urinetown is an award-winning satirical comedy full of laughs, musical references, and political commentary. It highlights class inequalities and the damage of climate change. Urinetown offers catchy songs, heart-wrenching scenes, and eye-catching dance moves.
Urinetown premiered in 2001 at the New York International Fringe Festival and opened on Broadway in September of that same year at Henry Miller’s Theatre. The music is by Mark Hollmann, the lyrics are by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and Kotis wrote the rest of the show. Urinetown has premiered all over the U.S. and the world. Urinetown has won 3 Tonys, 3 Outer Critics Circle awards, a Drama League award, and 2 Theatre World awards. It won best music and best direction at the 2002 Tony’s and Outstanding New Broadway Musical at the 2002 Outer Critics Circle Awards, just to name a few.
Urinetown is set during a major drought. Water is a limited resource, so the owner of the Urine Good Company (also known as UGC), Caldwell B. Cladwell, decides to make people pay to use the bathrooms to preserve water. This hits the poor the hardest. Many have to save up to use toilets, which have now become an amenity. Private toilets are unthinkable anymore. A young man named Bobby Strong decides to stand up and rally the poor to all fight against UGC and Cladwell.
Urinetown is full of commentary on real-world issues. You’ll see commentary on things such as climate change, capitalism, political corruption, and wealth inequality. The satire of these themes is deeply embedded in the musical. Many of the issues they bring up are issues that we seem to be facing in politics today. You’ll see people stand up and fight for the change that they want to see in their world.
No matter where you look on stage in the musical, you will always find a character who can bring you into the musical. From Bobby Strong to a UGC employee, the story will envelop you and bring you into the world that Urinetown is set in. It may seem bleak, but Urinetown is bound to get a laugh out of you. So set your calendars for February 6th, 7th, 14th, and 15th right here at Memorial in the auditorium for VPM Drama Company’s performance of Urinetown the Musical.
