Review Roundup: URINETOWN Opens at New York City Center Encores!

The New York City Center Encores! season kicks off with Urinetown! In this side-splitting satire directed by Teddy Bergman, a young hero leads his community in a fight against oppression. Set in a dystopian world where water is scarce and “Hope” is even scarcer, all citizens must now pay a fee for “The Privilege to Pee” at one of the public facilities controlled by a selfish tycoon. But the citizens can only hold it in so much longer and soon the poorest, filthiest of these facilities, becomes a “number one” site for major change.

Jordan Fisher (Bobby Strong), Keala Settle (Penelope Pennywise), Rainn Wilson (Caldwell B. Cladwell), Josh Breckenridge (Senator Fipp), Yeman Brown (Billy Boy Bill), Kevin Cahoon (Old Man Strong, Hot Blades Harry), Christopher Fitzgerald (Officer Barrel), Pearl Scarlett Gold (Little Sally), Greg Hildreth (Officer Lockstock), Jeff Hiller (Mr. McQueen), Tiffany Mann (Soupy Sue), Daniel Quadrino (RobbThe cy the Stockfish), Graham Rowat (Ensemble, Officer Lockstock on Feb 14), Stephanie Styles (Hope Cladwell), Myra Lucretia Taylor (Josephine Strong), and John Yi (Tiny Tom).

Check out what the critics are saying about the production...

Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Times: I was struck by the craftsmanship that holds “Urinetown” together. When the score does not nod toward the Hollywood of the 1930s, it winks at the Berlin of the 1920s musicalized by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, or glances at the Paris of the 1830s as immortalized by “Les Misérables.” And of course the title brings to mind Steeltown, the setting of Marc Blitzstein’s agitprop play with music “The Cradle Will Rock,” from 1937. Like that city, “Urinetown isn’t so much a place as it is a metaphysical place,” as Little Sally puts it.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: While rooted in the Brechtian tradition, the new production of Urinetown that opened this week at New York City Center as part of the Encores! series retains a trenchant freshness. Indeed, there are plenty of elements of the show that make it seem like it could have been written this year: the depletion of natural resources like water, the corruption of politicians in bed with corporate interests, the use of law enforcement to back them up, the reticence of the working class to question authority or stand up to their oppressors. Keala Settle, who plays a functionary for the evil Urine Good Company, even gets a big early laugh for an all-too-timely reference while defending a system that charges everyone an ever-climbing fee to use the public-only toilets: “Don’t you think I have taxes and tariffs and pay-offs to meet too?!” she exclaims. “No one’s getting anywhere for free!”

Brian Scott Lipton, Theater Pizzazz: Sadly, I would not expect a repeat performance (aka a Broadway transfer) from the less-than-ideal “revival” now being presented by City Center Encores! Part parable and part spoof of musical theater, the production, directed with a too-heavy hand by Teddy Bergman, takes its seemingly outlandish plot a bit too seriously, robbing the show of some of its much-needed laughs.