The Other Way

‘Urinetown’: It’s a privilege to ‘be’ in UA musical

Oct 25

Becca MartinUncategorized 1 Comment

This story appeared Oct. 22 in the What’s Up section. It’s “reprinted” here for folks interested in the Broadway-hit musical.

STAFF PHOTO ANDY SHUPE Sara Jane Robinson and Liam Selvey are the narrators and Greek chorus in “Urinetown,” on stage this week at University Theatre.

By Becca Bacon Martin
bmartin@nwaonline.com
Take a squirt of “Sweeney Todd,” add a drizzle of “Singin’ in the Rain,” mix in a whiz-bang of slapstick melodrama, put a timely and serious message at the heart of the play and wrap it in a candy coating of comedy.
That’s “Urinetown” — the musical, not the place, a difference immediately pointed out in the University Theatre production.
Within the play, being exiled to Urinetown is literally the end of the world. Even though it doesn’t have a happy ending, the musical promises to make audiences laugh at its premise — that people in this dystopian society must pay to use public restrooms — and at the same time, think about its message — that if mankind doesn’t take better care of the planet, the future could be this bleak.
“I think audiences will receive it on their own terms, and many people will enjoy it just based on its entertainment value,” says director Kate Frank. “But by end of the show, many people will be asking themselves what we should be doing now to prevent this dark scenario.”
“Urinetown,” which opens at University Theatre tonight, won three Tonys when it premiered on Broadway in 2001. Frank says it was selected for the UA season because “it’s so funny and so clever, the music is so wonderful, and students were so enthusiastic about doing it.”
“There’s a lot of different musical styles, and it all has to be very strong and very tight, because it’s a parody of musical theater,” she adds.
On a set that could have been designed for “Rent” or “Avenue Q,” the show opens with an immediate shattering of the fourth wall. That interactive style is perfect for Liam Selvey, who plays Officer Lockstock, the play’s narrator.
Selvey explains that he started juggling and doing comedy with his father, Harmless T. Jester, when he was 9 and was a street performer until he enrolled in the UA drama department at 23.
In “Urinetown,” “there’s a more direct relationship with the audience, and that’s always been fun for me.”
He introduces Officer Lockstock with “authority and gravity to his words, like a 1950s-public-service-announcement kind of police officer,” but the comic character soon turns sinister.
“‘Urinetown’ plays with the idea that nobody is good or bad,” Selvey says. “You see the stereotypes right away, but those lines get blurred as the play goes along — and that arc is really exciting to follow.”
Penelope Pennywise, proprietor of Urine Good Company’s Public Amenity No. 9, is clearly a villain, says Echo Sibley, a second-year MFA actor from Eureka Springs.
Already armed with a master’s degree in vocal performance and working on a second master’s in acting, Sibley “was excited about playing an older woman who has some bitterness to her,” and besides, she says, she knew she wanted to sing her favorite song in the show, “It’s a Privilege to Pee.”
Like many of the characters, Miss Pennywise ultimately has a change of heart. Hero Bobby Strong does not.
“It’s very easy for me to relate to Bobby,” says Jim Goza, a Fayetteville native and UA senior. “The show carries a lot of strong economic and corporate and political undertones, and I myself am rather active in those areas.”
Goza draws corollaries between the water crisis in “Urinetown” and “big oil” in real life, and like Bobby Strong, he intends to take a stand, traveling, acting and delivering the message when he gets out of school.
“I’m willing to make sacrifices and be patient.”
The denizens of “Urinetown” are not, and that brings the play to its dramatic conclusion.
“The playwright really says that we don’t have the capacity to change to save ourselves,” director Kate Frank says. “But I think saying that so darkly provokes the audience to disagree.”