The title for this award-winning musical by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis is inevitably going to put a lot of people off. In a clever stroke, the musical cleverly and amusingly acknowledges this practically immediately and makes a joke about it. The situation is simple: there is a terrible shortage of water so nobody is allowed to have a private toilet in his home. All toilets are privatised and the charge for their use is exorbitant. The hero is an assistant at the poorest, filthiest urinal in town. He falls in love with the daughter of a urinal firm’s wicked President and leads a rebellion against him.
The script is a satire on corporate greed; and, contrary to all the rules of popular show-biz entertainment, there is, and quite deliberately, no happy ending. However, Urinetown is not an agit-prop musical in the sense that the legendary The Cradle Will Rock was; rather is it a send-up of an agit-prop musical and musicals per se and especially the rousing songs of Les Miserables. The high spot is the hot gospel number, Run, Freedom, Run.