Socially Conscious Musical
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in Drafts - Program & Lobby Essays Published: Friday, 16 March 07 - 12:54 PM (GMT) |
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Urinetown ushers in a new/old fashion: the socially conscious musical
“Well, hello there. And welcome to Urinetown! Not the place, of course. The musical.” With Officer Lockstock’s opening words, Urinetown: The Musical makes its splash in the pond of musical theatre. It will be self-referential, humorous, satirical, deliberately dim-witted, socially conscious and silly. It will make you laugh, and it just might make you think.
Urinetown’s songs are cliché, sounding lifted directly from classic American musicals like West Side Story, Guys and Dolls and The Fantasticks. To summarily dismiss Urinetown as an updated version of Threepenny Opera with some Producers thrown in would be a mistake, however. Beneath the deceptive simplicity of the plot and familiarity of the music, Urinetown advanced the tide of the socially aware musical. Theatre historian John Bush Jones wrote, “Urinetown is heralding a return to those kinds of shows from past decades in which ‘serious musical’ and ‘entertaining musical’ were not contradictions in terms” (358). While Urinetown is a send-up of the techniques of musicals with a social conscience such as Ragtime, Rent and William Finn’s Falsettos trilogy, its own overarching message remains deadly serious: the writers’ fear that “We are killing ourselves, and there’s nothing we can do about it” (CITE).
Jones called Urinetown a “socially relevant, issue-driven, and often provocative – as well as entertaining…outrageous musical satire” (356). Book writer and lyricist Greg Kotis cites among his influences Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, a pair who tried to create socially effective theatre in post-WWII Germany by constantly reminding the audience of the medium. Using satire and irony to raise serious questions about individual freedoms versus corporate monopolies and totalitarian control, Urinetown asks a chilling question while never losing its playfulness, combining a frightening authenticity with disarming charm.
That Kotis was also influenced by cultural parodies in The Simpsons alongside his devotion to Leonard Bernstein is no surprise. The popular cartoon show is enjoyable whether one “gets” the references or not; similarly, “like good television writing, Urinetown [can] be enjoyed, for better or for worse, on virtually any level…ultimately, you [don’t] have to think at all to enjoy Urinetown. Still, it helped if you could” (Singer 225). Urinetown never stops making fun of itself and other members of its genre, leaving virtually no aspect of musical Broadway un-spoofed, from the intellectualization of Stephen Sondheim to the dance steps of Bob Fosse. In its ironic self-reflexivity, “Urinetown tapped the same ironic currents of popular culture as The Producers but amplified them…Where The Producers flirted with vulgarity, Urinetown sang about urinating” (Singer 227-8).
Kotis opines in one interview that “there’s a ridiculousness about people breaking into song every few minutes that is both wonderful and terrible at the same time” (Singer 228). Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez, creators of Avenue Q, addressed the embarrassment of young audiences by making those who are “breaking into song” puppets, a throwback to Sesame Street. Also, in the same season, 2001-02, other shows on Broadway shared Urinetown’s ironic streak: Reefer Madness, a spoof on a 1936 school education film about marijuana, The Rocky Horror Show, a musical of the film satire of the same name, and Bat Boy, a musical ripped from the tabloid headlines about a half-boy, half-bat who tries to assimilate with violent results. Bat Boy, like Urinetown, is self-referential and “poked fun at musical theater history and, of course, at the musical itself”(Singer 231).
Urinetown’s unique trip to Broadway through the New York Fringe has not diminshed its powerful social statement, all the more potent for its use of humor and irony. John Weidman, multiple Tony-winning author of Assassins, Big, and Contact, said, “The danger is that what you wind up with is a slightly homogenized safe product…The route that Urinetown followed to get to Broadway is probably what more and more interesting musicals are going to follow, because there were not expectations from those guys. They wrote what they wanted, and then it got moved along” (274). As its success has shown, a small-scale, low-budget musical like Urinetown – a musical with a conscience, heart and a streak of bathroom humor – can still make a splash with audiences.
Bryer, Jackson R. and Richard A. Davison, eds. The Art of the American Musical: Conversations with the Creators. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 2005.
Jones, John Bush. Our Musicals, Ourselves: A social history of the American musical theater. Brandeis University Press: Lebanon, NH, 2003.
Singer, Barry. Ever After: The Last Years of Musical Theater and Beyond. Applause: New York, 2004.
-- Linsday Christians
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