Theater Review—

TheatreWorks Does Well With A Broadway Triple Crown

By Julie Stern

NEW MILFORD —Theatreworks New Milford has chosen as its summer musical Urinetown, the savagely sweet satire that won the Tony Award’s Triple Crown (for Best Direction, Best Book, and Best Music and Lyrics.)

Program notes say that it parodies “social comment musicals” such as Le Miserables, Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story. This reviewer saw it more as a mixture of Footloose and “Marat-Sade” (the assassination of Marat as performed by the inmates of Charenton Asylum under the direction of the Marquis de Sade) with perhaps a touch of Three Penny Opera thrown in, and a heavy dose of the Simpsons.

The story is set in the not-too-distant future (“sometime after the Stink Years”), when environmental disaster has led to such a prolonged drought that the reservoirs have all dried up. As a water conservation measure, all private toilets (like lawn watering in Arizona) have been banned by the government, and replaced by public restrooms.

Caldwell B. Cladwell, the corporate villain of the piece, runs UGC (Urine Good Company), which owns all the bathrooms, and has bribed Congress to set high admission charges for using them, as well as making it illegal to pee anywhere else.

Narration is provided by the large and imposing policeman, Officer Lockstock (accompanied by his sidekick Officer Barrel). He identifies the main characters to us, and explains that it is his job to maintain order and keep the streets clean by arresting anyone guilty of unauthorized peeing, and in a sort of “extraordinary rendition,” deporting them to Urinetown. That’s a mysterious and sinister place of exile – nobody has ever returned from there – but Lockstock confides that we will find out more about it in Act Two.

Now the strands of the plot unfold: at the filthiest “public amenity,” in the poorest section of town, where the down and out locals can’t put together the price of admission to the bathroom, Bobby Strong (the hero) sees his own father grabbed by the cops and taken off to Urinetown. The seeds of revolution are sown: In the name of human dignity, Bobby will lead these homeless dregs in a protest against UGC and corporate greed.

Meanwhile, the sweet young ingénue, Hope, wanders into the neighborhood by mistake, and asks Bobby’s help in finding the gleaming tower on the hill where she is about to start her new job – at UGC.  Turns out she is Cladwell’s only daughter, just out of college, and ready to work as a fax and copy girl, lobbying the legislature for higher fees.

The chemistry is there. Hope and Bobby fall in love, setting up an inevitable, and terrible conflict.

Sharon Wilcox has directed the show with a heavy hand, giving us broad comedy and in-your-face social criticism. What makes it work best is the talent of the performers, especially Kevin Sturmer and Richard Damaso as Lockstock and Barrel, Keilly Gillen McQuail as “Little Sally,”  a teddybear-clutching street waif who is befriended by Lockstock and whose words contain wisdom that is too often unheeded.

Among the leering and demented street people who form the core of Bobby’s rebellion, Paula Anderson is a standout and Elyse Jasensky is also strong as Penelope Pennywise, the cruel matron who guards the entrance to the facility.

Ian Diedrich as Bobby, Morgan Firestone as Hope, and Joe Harding as Cladwell have beautiful voices that are a treat to listen to, but their characters are too simplistically stereotyped for them to be more than comic strip cutouts. Ironically, the message at the end is both serious and provocatively un-simple.

In all, this offers a lively, highly entertaining evening at the theater. The title may make some people uneasy, but that’s deliberate. It wouldn’t be the same show if it were called “Wee-Wee Town.”

(Performances continue on weekends until August 12, including a just-added Thursday evening show on August 10 and a Saturday matinee on August 12 [in addition to the evening performance already scheduled for that date].

Call 860-350-6863 for ticket and curtain details.)