Tony Award-winning Urinetown the Musical will open at the St James Theatre, London in February 2014, reports Michael Darvell.
A huge hit on Broadway, the musical Urinetown the Musical has taken more than 12 years to surface this side of the Atlantic. The UK premiere of the show by Mark Holmann (music and lyrics) and Greg Kotis (book and lyrics), directed by Jamie Lloyd, starts previews at the St James Theatre in Victoria from 22 February 2014, with a first night opening date of 11 March. The musical will receive an extended run until 3 May, after which it hopes to transfer to the West End. In New York the show played Off-Broadway in May and June of 2001. It then transferred to Broadway where it played for nearly 1,000 performances and won Tony Awards for Best Book, Best Score and Best Direction.
At heart Urinetown takes a satirical swipe at many of our treasured beliefs in politics, bureaucracy, capitalism, the law and society in general. It also sends up the traditional Broadway musical in turning it on its end and not providing a happy ending. The original idea of the piece came from Greg Kotis while he was travelling in Europe on very little money and found he could not afford to visit a toilet more than once a day because there was a pee-fee to pay every time he wanted to go.
The show is set in some mythical place in the dystopian future where there has been a 20-year drought. The shortage of water has meant that private toilet facilities are now banned. Everybody therefore has to use only public toilets which are controlled by a monopoly, the UGC corporation – Urinal Good Company, under the direction of evil tycoon Caldwell B. Cladwell. The public therefore have to pay UGC for the privilege of relieving themselves, or face a penalty, and if they flout the law they are sent to the Urinetown pee-nal colony (geddit?).
There are obviously myriad jokes to be made about this lifestyle in which it is forbidden not to use and pay for the public toilet amenities. At this week’s launch two songs illustrated the type of fun audiences can expect from the show, so it’s bound to be lavatory humour from start to finish. We can look forward to such numbers as ‘It’s a Privilege to Pee’, ‘Follow Your Heart’, ‘Look At the Sky’, ‘I See a River’ and ‘What is Urinetown?’
Casting has not yet been completed, but we are promised some familiar and celebrated performers along with a few surprises, according to director Lloyd who was taking an afternoon off from staging The Commitments (coming to the Palace Theatre at the end of September) to pitch for his next musical engagement. The show is produced by Julian Stoneman Associates and The Araca Group with production design by Soutra Gilmour, choreography by Ann Yee, lighting design by Adam Silverman, sound design by Terry Jardine and Nick Lidster, and musical supervision by Alan Williams.
Will it catch on? Will the humour appeal to our basic Anglo-Saxon love of low comedy, or will Urinetown the Musical be just another flush in the theatrical pan? Time will tell, but in the meantime, you may be relieved to know that you can already book for the show (www.stjamestheatre.co.uk).
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.