There’s been a lot of handwringing lately over how to handle the growing threat of inequality, as a handful of uber-rich titans seem poised to exert ever greater influence on our government. But at New York City Center, the resistance is looking and sounding more organized than it is online, not to mention more fun.
That’s because the Encores! concert series just kicked off its 2025 lineup with a new staging of Urinetown, Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’s 2001 musical satire focused on a world not entirely unlike our own, where the disparity between the have-nots and the haves-and-want-more seems to increase by the day. In this case, things have gotten so out of hand that for the poor, it has literally become, to quote one song title, a privilege to pee.
Though it enjoyed good reviews and a healthy run, and earned three Tony Awards—for Kotis’s book, the songs he and Hollmann crafted together (with Hollmann writing the music and co-writing the lyrics) and John Rando’s direction—Urinetown hasn’t been revived on Broadway since. A character in the show posits a possible explanation: “The title’s awful.”
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
I suspect it has more to do with the slightness of the piece, a transparent homage to/parody of the work of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht that never stops winking at the audience. But with the right talent attached, the musical remains engaging enough, and for this outing, director Teddy Bergman has enlisted a company of stage and screen actors who, for the most part, serve the material well.
Greg Hildreth is a key player as Officer Lockstock, the puffed-up policeman who immediately knocks down the fourth wall by welcoming us to Urinetown: “Not the place, of course. The musical.” The place, he explains, is “kind of a mythical place, you understand. A bad place. A place you won’t see until Act II. And then…? Well, let’s just say it’s filled with symbolism and things like that.”
Lockstock is frequently joined by Little Sally, a street waif—played with precocious wit by young actress Pearl Scarlett Gold—who embellishes and questions his narration while also, like him, figuring into the action. The story’s hero is Bobby Strong, a strapping young man who works at Public Amenity #9—”one of the poorest, filthiest urinals in town,” Lockstock tells us, where the least fortunate line up and count their pennies in hopes of being permitted to relieve themselves.
We learn that a 20-year-old drought has led to an epic water shortage, and a greedy business tycoon, one Caldwell B. Cladwell—that would be the villain—has conspired with corrupt politicians to profit from this catastrophe. Everything seems to go according to their plan until Caldwell’s daughter, Hope, returns from college to start working for her dad, and promptly falls for Bobby.
Caldwell is played here by Rainn Wilson, best known as an alumnus of TV’s “The Office,” who brings the right preening irascibility to the part, though not as entertainingly as John Cullum did in the Broadway production. Stephanie Styles’s Hope is more vivid, and funnier, particularly in her scenes with Jordan Fisher’s comically earnest Bobby.
Hollmann’s tunes, which also nod to jazz and gospel while channeling Weill—Bruce Coughlin’s orchestrations, expanded from his original work for Broadway, ape the late composer unabashedly—are sung with vigor by the whole cast, which also includes Keala Settle as Bobby’s boss, Penelope Pennywise. Settle revels in her character’s shrillness, as did the opening night audience, who responded to her big number, “It’s a Privilege to Pee,” with thunderous applause.
If this Urinetown is neither as starry nor as enchanting as some of Encores!’s other efforts over the past few years, it still delivers a good time. And you’ll seldom be as thankful for the presence of an accessible restroom during intermission.
Urinetown opened February 5, 2025, at City Center and runs through February 16. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
