Ten years after its leap from New York International Fringe Festival sensation to Tony Award-winning Broadway hit, Urinetown: The Musical has lost not a drop of its satirical sting.
Urinetown sounds a lot like some undiscovered, tongue-in-cheek musical that Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (or maybe Cradle Will Rock composer Marc Blitzstein) might have pumped out. The show by composer-lyricist Mark Hollmann and playwright-lyricist Greg Kotis is a delicious parody that works whether or not you grasp all of its targets – one being musical theater itself.
Urinetown had its South Florida premiere in 2007 at Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables, earning three Carbonell Awards. Now Slow Burn Theatre in west Boca Raton is delivering its version of a funny, thought-provoking musical that isn’t all that shocking, the cringe-worthy title notwithstanding.
In the show’s back-to-the-future vision of corporate greed and totalitarian repression, a 20-year drought has led to a torrent of profits for an outfit called Urine Good Company (UGC). Capitalizing on the severe water shortage, mogul Caldwell B. Cladwell (Larry Buzzeo) has used payoffs to gain privy primacy, controlling every public bathroom in a city where private facilities are banned. Whenever nature calls, each dirty, downtrodden man, woman and child has to pay to pee (there, we said it).
Trying to circumvent the monopoly by urinating anywhere else is one big mistake, earning the violator a swift trip to Urinetown, a mysterious place from which no one has ever returned. The system works until a peeved young hero named Bobby Strong (Daniel Schwab, talented but not yet leading man material) rouses the rabble to demand relief.
Slow Burn director-choreographer Patrick Fitzwater has assembled a large, young-skewing cast that collectively delivers the powerhouse vocal goods under the fine musical direction of Emmanuel Schvartzman. Fitzwater’s musical staging is sometimes amusing (the line of citizens waiting to use Public Amenity #9 jiggles uncomfortably in a gotta-go dance), sometimes overdone and too busy. But the story gets told (and well sung) on Ian T. Almeida’s facility-filled set.
Matthew Korinko, Slow Burn’s co-artistic director and the company’s frequent star, is impressive as the comically villainous Officer Lockstock. With scruffy urchin Little Sally (Jaimie Kautzmann), he deconstructs Urinetown and offers wry commentary as the show unfolds. Buzzeo is a gleefully over the top Cladwell, Cindy Pearce his female match (with Mae West overtones) as potty operator Penelope Pennywise. Lindsey Forgey is high-kicking and sweet-voiced as Hope Cladwell, the UGC “heiress” who falls for not-so-bad-boy Bobby.
Slow Burn is a musical theater company with moxie. It dares to do full productions of Stephen Sondheim’s works ( Into the Woods is up next, with Sweeney Todd set for next season), shows that fall into the just-fun category (this summer’s Xanadu, a musical performed on roller skates, and next summer’s The Wedding Singer) and unusual pieces like Side Show, about conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, coming next season. Sometimes, the choices tax Slow Burn’s resources, but somehow Fitzwater and Korinko manage to deliver musicals that entertain, provoke or do both. With Urinetown, Slow Burn demonstrates again it’s a company that is definitely heating up.



















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