courtesy of dok wright
42 FEATURE
SEVEN DAYS
03.19.14-03.26.14
SEVENDAYSvt.com
Left to right: Logan Mills, Katrina Roen, Craig Wells, Ceara Ledwith, Peter Hiebert
Comic Relief Theater review: Urinetown: The Musical, UVM Department of Theatre B y Al ex Br ow n
T
he University of Vermont Department of Theatre has pulled out all the stops to present a rousing production of Urinetown, the musical that scored two Tony awards in 2002 for Mark Hollman (music and lyrics) and Greg Kotis (book and lyrics). It playfully demeans the possibility of putting a message in a musical by setting up a corporate villain too over the top to fear and too hilarious to hate, wrapping everything in a brilliant parody of the musical art form itself. The show takes place in a city that is suffering a decades-long water shortage. The government has outlawed private bathrooms to conserve water and has obliged corporate giant Urine Good Company by outlawing relief outdoors. UGC has the monopoly on public bathrooms: Everyone
must pay to pee. Sharp class lines emerge, and the story starts at one of the most miserable public facilities, where the poor must daily scrape up the ever-rising cost of relieving their bladders. It’s a potent metaphor for corporate control, allowing for hyperbole that would be satiric but for the musical’s higher artistic principle: irony. As in a typical musical, there is a love story, some social commentary, two large groups of people with opposing ideas and a chance for a happy ending. Though all these treats are doled out to the audience, they come with a price tag: We have to laugh at what we love. A typical day for the robber baron at the helm of UGC, Caldwell B. Cladwell, involves bribing politicians, amassing more wealth and suppressing the people with the help of a police force steered by Officer
Lockstock. Cladwell has to teach his fresh-from-college daughter, Hope, the ways of corporate success. “I never realized that large monopolizing companies could be such a force for good in the world!” she chirps. Meanwhile, struggling assistant pissoir custodian Bobby Strong has just seen his father hauled away. Old Man Strong lacks the cash to pee, so police march him off to exile in Urinetown. It’s a tragic fate, as we later learn. When Hope and Bobby fall in love, and the cost of peeing is hiked higher still, something’s gotta give. And there is singing and dancing to prove it. Director Gregory Ramos never misses a chance to exaggerate a convention of musical theater. Yet the result is not unfeeling sarcasm but an enthusiastic celebration of how freely an audience gives its heart to emotion laid bare through music. Ramos manages to balance homage and ridicule, and establishes the crucial structure for real theater: characters with objectives. The show’s prime comedic target is Bertolt Brecht’s epic theater. Brecht is easy to mock for his large political ambitions, or his emphasis on intellectual instead of emotional reactions to art. But,
as this production shows, Brecht’s practice of calling attention to theatrical artifice is principally a way of making us curious. When actors break the frame and speak about the story they’re in, when a sign saying “Secret Hideout” appears onstage, or when two lovers burst into a mawkish song about mawkish songs, the play is laying bare its own workings, as if daring us to be affected by them. Such self-referential moments delight, and they teach us how theater works. Brecht wanted to go a step further and reveal the ideology beneath theatrical conventions. Urinetown turns that notion on its head by mocking dreams of political change. Once class struggle is a dance number, it’s not exactly philosophy. But Brecht’s techniques work regardless. Noticing the artificiality of a play helps us stand back in wonder to interpret the effect on us. As Officer Lockstock says when introducing the setting, “It’s any town. Any town that would be in a musical.” The overt claim of naturalism explodes the possibility of naturalism, distancing us and reminding us that we should question the familiar. The use of a narrator in Urinetown gives every aspect of the show a modern, ironic stance. Ramos doesn’t lay it on too thick, and Joel Kasnetz gives the role