REVIEW: Brilliantly Bizarre, URINETOWN THE MUSICAL Is Better Than It Sounds.

Friday 13th January 2023, 7:30pm, Hayes Theatre Potts Point

Mark Hollman (Music and Lyrics) and Greg Kotis' (Book and Lyrics) self-aware, satirical, comedy musical URINETOWN THE MUSICAL opens at Hayes Theatre to roars of laughter as unusual subject matter makes for powerful metaphors for modern life. Following a premiere season in Canberra, this work, directed by Ylaria Rogers is the first offering from new theatre company Heart Strings Theatre Co.

While generally a foreign concept in Australia, anyone who has travelled, particularly in Europe, will have experienced the challenge of finding enough coins to utilize a public pay toilet. This concept, intended to finance maintenance and cleaning of facilities and believed to be traced back almost 2000 years, inspired Kotis to write URINETOWN THE MUSICAL. Joining with Hollman, the pair extrapolated the enterprise to its extreme, weaving in a 20-year drought to justify Urine Good Company's privatization of public amenities that everyone must use as private conveniences are abolished and public urination is subject to the offender being sent to the mysterious "Urinetown". This is a delightfully self-aware work that sends up the tradition of the Broadway Musical, drawing on every possible trope, to deliver a message about corporate greed and mismanagement, corruption, and broken governments that fail to look after their citizens while also challenging the idea that humanity doesn't always see beyond their present wants and needs.

Monique Langford (Set Design) has created grungy graffitied world with 'simplicity' of an assortment of ladders and scaffolding implying that the location of Public Amenity Number 9 is in a run down poorer section of the city. Jasmin Borsovszky's lighting design shifts the work from the boondocks to the bright shiny offices of Urine Good Company and also allows a variety of design ideas, from the haunted faces below suspended vintage tungsten bulbs and the use of torchlight. Helen Wojtas' costume design gives the shabbily dressed poor a unique assortment of patched rags that can be easily covered when the ensemble are required to shift to the bright bold colors of Urine Good Company's clerks and secretaries.

The cast, many of which are new or relatively new to Sydney stages, deliver a consistently strong high energy performance that balances the absurdity and awareness of that they are sending up musical theatre with a sincerity that expresses that deep down they enjoy the genre. Their recreations of Cameron Mitchell's choreography is tight as they dance through routines that have artistic nods to Bob Fosse and the chorus lines from the Golden Age of Broadway, with a contemporary twist and humor infused. Each performer gives their respective characters unique voices while ensuring that they work together for ensemble numbers and refreshingly, the sound design that blends the vocals with Matthew Reid's (Musical Director) 5 piece band is perfectly balanced.

Petronella Van Tienen and Joel Horwood take on the romantic leads of Hope Cladwell, the beautiful, bright, and bubbly daughter of Caldwell B. Cladwell, Urine Good Company's owner and Bobby Strong, the handsome "boy next door" Amenity attendant who sees the inequality and unfairness of the pay-to-pee policies. The duo infuse a delightful innocence into their characters while ensuring the jokes grounded in naivety land easily without being forced. Dani Caruso takes on the short-lived role of Bobby's father Pa Strong while Joe Dinn draws inspiration from HAIRSPRAY's Edna Turnblad as Ma Strong, giving her a hilarious physicality and vocal quality.

As narrator and law enforcer Lockstock, Karen Vickery gives the gender-swapped role a suitable gravitas balanced with an undertone of warmth when the Narrator interacts with Little Sally, a surprisingly smart and aware street urchin in the style of LES MISERABLES' Gavroche, presented by Natasha Vickery. Lockstock's pee-policy enforcement is supported by Tom Kelly's Officer Barrell with Kelly's character doubling drawing out another musical theatre standard as shifts between law enforcer and Tiny Tom are highlighted rather than hidden.

Sitting between the general population required to meet the ever-increasing price for a pee and the lavatory lord that owns the conveniences, Penelope Pennywise, portrayed by Deanna Farnell, manages Public Amenity No. 9. Farnell gives the hardworking woman just trying to survive a deliciously tough edge while still exposing a degree of humanity that bubbles beneath her self-preservation. Closer to Urine Good Company's management is Caldwell B. Cladwell's assistant McQueen who is presented with a quiet and judging severity of an obedient puppy by Artemis Alfonzetti. Max Gambale presents what is purported to be the ultimate villain of the story Caldwell B. Cladwell, the oily and unethical entrepreneur with an accent that evokes memories of unscrupulous plantation and factory owners from America's Deep South.

URINETOWN THE MUSICAL provokes thought as to what we expect from big business and government and the expectation that their efforts be for the benefit of society overall, not just the privileged few at the top in a similar vein to the outcry at the different standards imposed across Sydney during 2021's lockdowns. It also considers the question of whether, when left to make their own decisions, will the general population act in a way that also protects the future or will they act in a way that satisfies the present with no regard for the future, with again, parallels that can be drawn with the recent pandemic and the response from citizens of multiple nations around the world. History and current conversation suggests that the latter will prevail and therefore a degree of governance is required but that governance must also be governed.

URINETOWN THE MUSICAL is well worth adding to your Summer theatre list for both its well designed expression of this absurd musical and the opportunity to catch a number of fresh new performers at the start of what promising careers and a new theatre company that has proven itself with this wonderful first offering.

Urinetown - Hayes Theatre Co

Photos: Phil Erbacher

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