Greg Kotis's Urinetown: The Musical

Urinetown: The Musical was held at a quaint theatre in Austin by the name The City Theatre. It is in production August 15 through September 7th at 7:30 pm. Greg Kotis originally wrote this play, with music written by Mark Hollman; both wrote the lyrics. The Production Director for this rendition was Marco Bazan; Cathie Sheridan was the Music Director. Both did a spectacular job of conducting production’s comedic intensity. Urinetown was originally written in the 1990s when Kotis was traveling Europe and failed to have the correct amount of change in order to pay for the pay-toilets. As it says in the program, this theatre musical pays homage to other great musicals such as West Side Story, Les Miserables, Chicago, Evita, and Fiddler on the Roof.

This musical is political satire, focusing on the greed and unjust handling of public facilities, enlightening the audience on how life would be if one were to pay for the use of toilets. The stage is washed with yellow lighting and most cast members dress to set the “urine” tone wear various articles of yellow clothing. The attitude was very much “us against them”, with the poorer, dirty townsmen having to pay for toilets while the wealthy need not worry.

The city tyrant and mayor, if you will, has a sweet, college graduate daughter who comes to town to work for her dad.

Once in this position, she understands the dire toilet situation of the city, while at the same time falling in love for the janitor of one of the restroom areas. She fights for the townsmen’ rights but is taken hostage by her lover’s equals in an effort to get the rights they deserve. Later in the play, she obtains reigning position of the town and fails to properly manage the water shortage and deficit. Instead, she rules with love and smiles, which naturally does not work very well. The people, as well as herself, eventually die of disease and

poverty.
I quite liked the appearance, costumes, acting, and music of the play. The rich were dapper in appearance with a snide, almost bourgeoisie attitude. Opposite of that were the penniless, which wore outdated, worn clothing and had messy hair, finished off with dirty faces. When it came to the music, the composers used violin in a melodic sense to convey the puppy-love attraction between the tyrant’s daughter and the plumber. Every actor has a beautiful, loud singing voice. s
The play was written and conveyed very well, in my opinion. While the dad was seen as this awful man, which he was, no one realized he also kept his affairs in order. The people formed riots to fight their oppression without having a plan as to how to properly run the city. Then comes a ruler with the complete opposite style of command that everyone thought was what they wanted, and it left the people for dead. This storyline left one with food for thought: there cannot be one extreme or the other when it comes to handling situations. There must be well thought out terms that do not compromise the mental and physical state of the mass public.