An Unusual Perspective

We have been discussing only the artistic content of the show so far, and in some depth, so today for a change of pace, I'm going to address one of the technical aspects of the Urinetown. This show makes fun of just about everything theatrical, including the technical facets; there are lighting jokes, costume jokes, and set design jokes built right into the script, and we won't shirk from them.  For now though, let's talk about our set.

I'll give you a tour of the complete set design later on, but for now, let's focus on one particular aspect of the set:  the use of forced perspective. Given the economic and political themes of the show, we wanted the overall feel of the set to be oppressively large and uniform, to suggest the totalitarian nature of the place in which our characters live.  We decided upon fat and blocky-looking walls, constructed of institutional, cinder-block-sized brick (much like that used in most high schools).  In order to make the repeating structures look much larger than they actually are, we use a trick of forced perspective.  The buildings closest to the audience are the tallest (at 18 feet high, nearly the entire height of our stage area).  But the buildings placed further upstage are far from identical, as shown by a side view:

The front view makes it look as if three identical, chunky "cell-blocks" are lined up on both sides of the stage, extending a great distance.  In reality, as revealed by the side view, they are actually much shorter and narrower than they appear, allowing for a grander sense of scale.  As long as the angles and distances are carefully calculated and constructed,  the illusion can be very powerful.

We have used this kind of strategy before on the BRAVO stage. Most recently, the set design for In The Heights used forced perspective to give the illusion of being surrounded by towering brownstones on the upper West side of Manhattan. Here, the horizontal angles were less pronounced, but the perspective in the vertical direction was even sharper.  Each of these buildings comprised four stories (though the top story was barely visible), with each successive story constructed slightly smaller for a sense of realism.  The resulting unusual angles for all of the doors, windows, trim, and bricks made this set a nightmare to construct and paint.  Ironically, if the set team handles the forced perspective properly - the audience never even notices.

Another recent BRAVO show that used forced perspective in a different way was Hairspray Jr. In the finale of that show, three gigantic hairspray bottles appeared on stage as studio props. But two of these were constructed at only half-scale, and were placed further up and back of the bigger can, to give the illusion that they were all the same size, and the stage was much deeper than it actually was.

A much trickier use of perspective, though, was the opening flat for Tracy's bedroom, making it appear that we were looking down at Tracy, who was waking up in her bed.  This perspective trick required building the side tables, lamps, and headboard all in three-dimensional forced perspective; no mean feat.  The master carpenter for that show, Tom Ziobro, had more than 25 years of experience building theatrical sets, but retired from set construction immediately after Hairspray.  I'm not saying there's a direct connection.  But forced perspective can be hard.

Second Saturday Contest

It's another Saturday, and time for another contest.  No essays are required.  I have hidden the word URINE somewhere in one of my previous posts (you may need to check the archive).  No, the word "Urinetown" doesn't count. The FIRST cast member who posts a comment to this post identifying the correct location of the hidden URINE wins a Urinetown promotional roll of toilet paper, pre-signed by the original cast from 2001. Happy hunting!

Crossing the River

When I was about the same age as you are now, I belonged to a volunteer performance group called the Civic Singers of Toledo (my hometown).  The Civic Singers was a group culled mostly from the choirs of various local churches, who performed each Monday night a secular program for a rotating group of nursing homes and retirement communities.  The women wore formal gowns, and the men wore red jackets, white shirts, and black bow ties.  I was in high school, and the average age of the remaining group members was well over 60; my involvement with this group is one of the fondest memories I have of my hometown.

While the program we performed would change from year to year, one song that always made it into our repertoire was Deep River, an old spiritual of African American origin.  It started out so slow and quiet that you could barely hear the singing, but by the time we reached the bridge, the volume rose to a focused intensity, and the house nearly shook with an emotional crying out:

Deep River.  My home is over Jordan.  Deep River, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.

Oh, don't you want to go, To the Gospel feast; That Promised Land, Where all is peace?

Oh, Deep River, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.

The beauty of the song left an impression on me (even now I can sing the baritone part by heart), but I didn't really think too much about the lyrics at the time.

What are frequently referred to today as 19th-century Negro spirituals were generally created by enslaved African Americans, usually of Christian origin, as a direct response to the abject misery and woe that frequently comprised their lives.  The Jordan River is frequently mentioned in these spirituals, a fact I noticed, but didn't think about too much as a teenager.  The symbol of the Jordan River was borrowed by the slave community directly from the Jewish tradition; this was the river that the Hebrews finally crossed to reach the promised land.  As it turns out, the Jordan River was also an unofficial name enslaved African Americans gave to the Ohio River, north of which lay all of free states.  Crossing the River Jordan, then, was a symbol for escaping to freedom, of reaching the promised land, and what would surely be a better life.  These dreams of escape made their way into any number of spirituals, usually sung by the enslaved, the miserable, and the bereft.

In reality though, very few of the enslaved actually escaped, and those that did never experienced the utopia they were hoping for.  After hundreds of years of oppressive slavery, the River Jordan began to symbolically represent something else - the only hope left available to the hopeless after years of despair - the hope for a quick and peaceful death.  Countless numbers of early spirituals, if listened to with a careful ear, never express a hope for freedom, or a better life, or anything with any degree of optimism.  Instead, these spirituals all pine desperately for the day that their singers can finally be with their maker, free of the daily torment, and at long last at peace.  Imagine the kind of grief and melancholy you must feel to have your only true wish to be for a restful and timely death.  To sing Deep River was to understand a sorrow so great that only death could offer relief; heady stuff for a 16-year-old in a red coat and bow tie.

Some years later, I found myself rehearsing for a dinner theatre production of Show Boat in the same town.  I had been cast at the age of 20 as half of the entire male chorus (the Westgate Dinner Theatre didn't boast a big stage).  Deep River had actually been included in the original version of Show Boat, but at 4-1/2 hours, the show needed to be cut, and Deep River didn't make the grade.  But a snipet of another spiritual song, Mis'ry's Comin' Round, remained in Act I, sung by the black chorus.  Our music director decided to cut this brief song as well.  After all, he explained, the song was rather slow and boring, and didn't advance the plot.


Our director, based in New York, flew in shortly thereafter, and once he learned of the cut, he threw an enormous tantrum, and immediately restored the song.  The director gathered everyone in the rehearsal room, where he explained at length the underlying historical context for the lyrics of the song, and described the emotional power of its underlying yearning for death.  After his explanation, the music director sat at his piano and quietly played the first plaintive notes of the piece; the actors looked at each other, and then started to perform the song with a new understanding.  No one watching this new performance was unmoved; I remember having tears in my eyes as I listened to the black chorus pour what sounded like a lifetime of pain into their singing.

I remembered that experience some years later still, when I was directing a production of Big River (the musical version of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).  Big River contains a scene featuring a number of slaves who are chained together being transported by their masters in a skiff across the Mississippi River.  Along the way, they sing The Crossing, which of course isn't really about crossing a river. Have a listen:




It almost seems crass and obvious to mention that Urinetown takes this Negro spiritual river motif, and turns it on its head.  At the end of Act II, Hope launches into I See A River, first by mimicking the voice of a gutsy blues singer, to establish her gospel roots (a strange juxtaposition for such a rich white girl).  The river that Hope sings about represents something for which her people are desperately yearning; but here, the river doesn't represent freedom, or equality, or even a peaceful death.  In the midst of an oppressive drought, this river represents - water.  Using a river as a metaphor for water is about as literal an interpretation as any found in the show, and is an appropriate final jolt for an audience that has by this time, suffered enough.

A Guest Submission

An unofficial submission to our recent contest by Gussie Lenehan (the redoubtable mother of Aidan) was interesting enough that I thought it merited special note.  Gussie felt that Run, Freedom, Run reminded her of Gonna Build A Mountain, from Stop the World, I Want to Get Off (1961).  Gonna Build A Mountain is a fine answer - it certainly owes a great deal to the gospel tradition.  But there's even a closer similarity between these two songs that I hadn't noticed before.

First, listen to the first stanza of Run, Freedom, Run:




Then listen to the first stanza of Gonna Build A Mountain:



These two songs not only share exactly the same melody for the first four measures, they use an identical chord structure for the entire verse.  Kudos to Gussie, and her keen ear!

Side Note:  Stop the World, I Want to Get Off opened first in London, and didn't make it to Broadway until 1978, some 17 years later.  It's an odd, abstract little piece, based around the concept of an entire man's life (Littlechap), from birth to death, being represented by a circus. Sammy Davis Jr. starred in the Broadway version, which lasted for exactly 30 performances. The miracle is that anyone remembers this show at all (and for the most part I'd like to forget it). But Sammy made one song from the show his own, and his personal fame managed to keep this song in the public consciousness:  What Kind of Fool Am I?

Freedom Rocks the Boat

In the mid-80s, I directed a high-school production of Fiddler on the Roof, a show I know some of you have recently experienced for yourselves. Fiddler is a strictly staged and scripted show, and there isn't really too much room for individual creativity in its direction, but once in a while you find a moment or two of inspiration.  I had cast the role of Fruma-Sarah (the scary ghost of the butcher's dead wife) with an African-American girl, who had an absolutely incredible voice.  When she reached the point in the dream sequence where she utters her final curse, I had her start riffing Whitney Houston-like all over the map, powering out a huge note of threat at the end, a startling departure from the way this show is typically sung.  A nice Jewish play, with a touch of Aretha Franklin.

Neither Whitney nor Aretha learned their vocal craft in a Motown studio, but rather in a church, singing powerful gospel songs with their local choirs.  And ever since strong gospel singers have been available, they have had a strong influence on Broadway.  Entire books have been written about the history of gospel music in musical theatre, so I won't try to retread that ground here.  But a couple of highlights are worth noting.

Langston Hughes, known as the "Poet Laureate of Harlem," played an important role in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s.  Hughes wanted to capture the common experiences of Black America in his writing.  In 1961, Hughes wrote the gospel song-play Black Nativity, a retelling of the classic Nativity story, using an entirely black cast, Christmas carols sung in the gospel style, and some original poetry.  Black Nativity opened in December 1961 off-Broadway, and was one of the first plays written by an African American to be staged there.  Ever since the mid-90s, Black Nativity has been staged annually in a Seattle theatre, and has become a strong cultural tradition.  Black Nativity went on to influence both of the rock gospel shows, Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell.


Many gospel shows were to follow:  Trumpets of the Lord (1964);  But Never Jam Today, an all-black re-telling of Alice and Wonderland (1969);  Purlie (1970), whose signature song Walk Him Up I used to perform with my high school show choir (though we were mostly white, and I got to sing the black lead);  The Wiz (1975);  Your Arms Too Short to Box With God (1976);  Bubbling Brown Sugar (1976);  and finally, The Gospel at Colonus (1983), a re-telling of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, a nearly perfect example of the form.

I include a promotional clip for The Gospel at Colonus below - it's a long clip, so you can just sample it, but get the flavor. Yes, that's Morgan Freeman.

 

These were all shows with entirely black casts, black production teams, and for the most part, appealed primarily to black audiences.  But gospel music had for a long time been seeping into the mainstream of Broadway, most often in the form of a big production number, typically found in Act II of a big musical.  Examples of a gospel-style song in a mainstream Broadway show are so numerous it's almost silly to try, but see how many you recognize from my very abbreviated list below:

"Get Happy" from The Nine-Fifteen Revue (1930)
"Blow, Gabriel, Blow" from Anything Goes (1934)
"Great Come and Get It Day" from Finian's Rainbow (1947)
"I'm On My Way" from Paint Your Wagon (1951)
"The Brotherhood of Man" from How to Succeed... (1961)
"We Beseech Thee" from Godspell (1970)
"Brand New Day" from The Wiz (1975)
"Black & White" from Barnum (1980)
"Holier Than Thou" from Nunsense (1985)
"'Til We Reach That Day" from Ragtime (1998)
"A Joyful Noise" from Bat Boy (2001)
"I Know Where I've Been" from Hairspray (2002)
"Prayer of the Comfort Counselor" from Spelling Bee (2005)
"Freak Flag" from Shrek the Musical (2008)
"Raise Your Voice" from Sister Act (2011)

Each one of the above is a huge gospel-style number, almost always situated in Act II, which tends to top everything preceding it.  Gospel numbers just seem to be natural show-stealers.

Sooner or later, you know I'm going to try to tie all this back to Urinetown somehow, and here's where it happens.  The third production number in Act II of Urinetown is "Run, Freedom, Run", a tent-revivalist, gospel-style song, complete with testifying and faith-healing.  It's gospel roots are unquestionable, and it openly acknowledges the debt it owes to all of the gospel production numbers that have preceded it.  In my mind, though, the particular style of "Run, Freedom, Run", as sung by Bobby Strong, pays particular homage to two specific Broadway standards.

The first of these comes from Big River, in it's Act II blockbuster "Waitin' for the Light to Shine". This number is sung by the young Huck Finn, another rascal; both young rabble-rousers are preaching about the healing power of optimism (although it doesn't ultimately pan out so well for Bobby Strong).  Listen to a bit of "Waitin' for the Light" below:




Run, Freedom, Run even mimics Waitin for the Light's a cappella choral break in the middle of the song.  An easy forerunner found here.

But the most obvious acknowledgement that Run, Freedom, Run makes is to the Act II show-stopper found in Guys and Dolls.  In the 1950 Broadway classic (since revived five times), a group of crusty gangsters find themselves at a prayer meeting due to a lost bet.  One of their number, Nicely-Nicely, stands up and begins to testify.  Have fun!

Snuff That Cool Boy

Early in Act II of Urinetown we find Hope Cladwell taken hostage by our band of revolutionaries, and an internal debate is had on whether or not to take her life as retribution for Cladwell's betrayal. Hot Blades Harry and Little Becky Two-Shoes lead the murderous faction, as Little Sally urges more humane restraint.  Harry and Becky make their case most fervently in the song Snuff That Girl, which owes its historical context to a song first performed in West Side Story in 1957.

In West Side Story, we see another band of hotheads (in this case a street gang called the Jets, made up of antsy white boys) who are itching for a fight with the Sharks, a Puerto Rican gang whose territory adjoins their own.  Riff, the leader of the Jets, plays the Little Sally role here, telling his fellow bangers to keep their cool, at least for the moment. But the underlying need to knock heads keeps bubbling up through the Jets' outwardly "cool" exterior - resulting, naturally, in a ballet-like dance number, but one with periodic bursts of violent energy and intimidating finger-snapping.

Harry Hot Blades leads the dance break in Snuff That Girl, but unlike Riff, this hothead is for all-out warfare.  Compare the finger-snapping, and the barely-restrained undercurrents of violence in both of these songs, and it's impossible to miss the intended parody.  I've included "Cool" from the movie version of West Side Story below.  The crouching dance move you see at 2:52 (performed directly at the camera) was copied exactly in the dance break of Snuff That Girl by John Carrafa, the choreographer of Broadway's Urinetown, which always got a huge laugh (from people who were old enough to know West Side Story, anyway):



The gang-style ballet dancing in West Side Story, while ground-breaking and powerful in the early 60s, has not aged well; it's hard to imagine current-day gang bangers pulling off a pirouette in an intimidating way.  So this choreography style has come in for a fair amount of parody, even without Urinetown's help:



And the Jets and Sharks would be somewhat chagrined, I think, to learn that their moves were being used now to sell clothes from the Gap (and lots of other stuff):



West Side Story was originally choreographed by Jerome Robbins, but Snuff That Girl, as originally choreographed, mostly paid homage to Bob Fosse, choreographer of such standards as Chicago, Sweet Charity, and Cabaret; but as this post is already getting overly long, we'll leave our discussion of Bob for another day.

Bobby Strong as Archetype

The prototypical male lead of an American musical comedy has been around for more than a hundred years.  Bobby Strong, Urinetown's hero, has all of the requisite character traits:  brash, charming, cocky, and a bit of a scoundrel, willing to break the rules.  He has antecedents reaching all the way back to 1904, when George M. Cohan invented such a character in his Little Johnny Jones (featuring such songs as Yankee Doodle Boy, and Give My Regards to Broadway).  Johnny Jones is an American jockey with a smart mouth, and a good pair of tap shoes.

This character would be developed further in the years to come in any number of subsequent musical comedies:  Billy in Anything Goes, Joey in Pal Joey, Woody in Finian's Rainbow, Harold Hill in The Music Man, Nathan in Guys and Dolls, and Ponty in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.  I've mentioned in an earlier post Urinetown's strong debt to The Threepenny Opera, and its archetypal lead, Larry Foreman.  Here are a pair of photos featuring both Bobby Strong and Larry Foreman in recent productions of these two shows - can you tell which is which?  This is ample evidence on its own for the conscious acknowledgment of Larry as a defining influence on Bobby Strong:

The archetypical musical comedy hero nearly always conquers all in the face of impossible odds, gets the girl, and exits the stage in triumph, all by the end of Act II.  Urinetown offers no such victories to Bobby; he is brutally murdered in the middle of Act II, abandoned by his former followers, with his ideals exposed as naive wishful thinking.  His final love ballad, such as it is, must be sung from beyond the grave.  The death of a hero isn't exactly unknown in American musical theatre - Urinetown is surely winking in the direction of Billy in Carousel.  But whereas Billy is ultimately redeemed, and gets to see his dreams come true from his heavenly perch, everything Bobby has worked for is ultimately denied to him, and everyone who followed him. His final words are, "If only ---", and then he dies.  What kind of musical is this?

A Contest For You

While I don't mind writing on-and-on about the historical influences on Urinetown, I think it's time I heard from you.  I was about to write a post about the song Run, Freedom, Run, from Act II, but instead, I'm going to give you a chance for a change, in the form of a little contest. Post a comment below telling me what previous theatre tradition, show, or song you think has either influenced, or is being commented on by, Run, Freedom, Run.  If you have no idea, just post a guess!  The cast member that posts the most interesting answer (there is no "right" answer), as determined in a completely subjective manner by me, will receive 50 promotional stickers used by the original production team of Urinetown in 2001. 

These are original promotional materials from Urinetown (not reproductions), and feature six of the original cast members:  Jennifer Laura Thompson (Hope Cladwell), John Cullum (Caldwell B. Cladwell), Spencer Kayden (Little Sally), Jeff McCarthy (Officer Lockstock), Nancy Opel (Miss Pennywise) and Hunter Foster (Bobby Strong).

The contest will end Tuesday, May 20th at 8pm.  Cast members only, please, and be sure to sign your comment, so I know who you are!  I have attached a clip of Run, Freedom, Run being performed by the original cast at the Tony Awards in 2002.  Good Luck!

Mr. Cladwell, Mr. Herman

We first meet Caldwell B. Cladwell in a scene devoted nearly solely to this single character, featuring an over-the-top, eponymously named song of self-congratulation.  This musical piece represents a clear nod to the Jerry Herman-style production number, typically an outrageously staged spectacle, with a stage-full of chorus boys and girls idolizing a featured performer.   Jerry Herman, the composer and lyricist of such stage classics as Mame, Hello Dolly, La Cage Aux Folles, and many others, perfected this form of "The-Title-of-This-Song-Is-My-Name" production number, specifically in the songs "Hello Dolly" (1964) and "Mame" (1966), both joyful musical celebrations of the optimism and cleverness of the female star.

In the present incarnation, "Mr. Cladwell" offers up a version of this production convention by gleefully celebrating Cladwell's unfettered corruption, murderous brutality, and unlimited riches, complete with kick-line, top-hat, and cane.  This dark twist on the happy Busby-Berkeley-like musical numbers may seem like a post-modern development, but in fact, this type of parody has been with us for some time.  In the 1950s and 60s, when "corporate America" first became a common phrase, the Broadway stage began to comment on the possibility of a business community run amok.

An obvious and famous example of this is the 1961 How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, a show that humorously spotlighted the dysfunction, nepotism, and corruption of the corporate world.  But my personal favorite example of the joyful musical expression of over-the-top capitalism is from a show you almost certainly have never heard of, even though it too, was composed by Jerry Herman, and starred Angela Lansbury (the star of Mame and Sweeney Todd).  Herman's 1969 Dear World, is the musical version of the play The Madwoman of Chaillot, by Jean Giraudoux, and tells the story of a possibly insane poor woman who plots to stop businessmen from drilling for oil in her beloved Parisian neighborhood.

Listen to In the Spring of Next Year, the opening number of Dear World, in which the businessmen are anticipating their soon-to-arrive riches, erupting into ballet-like leaping across their corporate conference tables - I can almost see Cladwell in the room:

Incidentally, Dear World, in my humble view, is a much-underrated show, and contains several of the most haunting and moving stage ballads ever written, not just by Herman, but by any 20th-century composer.  If you are a gusty mezzo looking for a unique audition song, you can't do any better than the sweepingly emotional (and surprisingly modern) I've Never Said I Love You.  And don't miss Lansbury's powerful renditions of Kiss Her Now, and I Don't Want to Know.

A Theory of Scarcity

In and among the silliness, snark, and general smartass, Urinetown occasionally tries to touch briefly on more serious topics, if only for the purpose of making the audience feel uncomfortable.  The script adopts as its patron saint one Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, a 19th-century English scholar, who wrote extensively on theories of population change.

Malthus published his most famous work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, in 1798, to generally scathing reviews and heated controversy.  The paper sparked a national debate in Britain, as to what the "ideal" population growth rate ought to be, and how it affected the national economy.  Ultimately, this debate led to the institution of the first national census in Britain, an event which has continued to be held every 10 years to the present date.

While Malthus has been much maligned, especially by some in the present day, his theory suggested nothing more revolutionary than that population growth was somewhat self-regulating; that as population grew, additional stresses are placed on natural resources, and if allowed to grow unchecked, that population would naturally be slowed by the famine and disease which would surely result.  Scholars who point out the obvious un-sustainability of a people's lifestyle are rarely popular, and Malthus was no exception in his time.  "Malthusian catastrophe" was the derogatory phrase given to his population theories, and even today there are those who denigrate his work for political reasons.

Urinetown, a show that does not shy away from such a ready-made controversy, is set in a dystopian future where water is so scarce that a tax must be imposed for peeing.  A Malthusian catastrophe befalls the entire cast near the end of the show, prompting Little Sally to wonder aloud, "What kind of a musical is this?"  Lockstock shouts directly at the audience at one point, calling them out on their resource-wasting ways.  As the entire cast begins to die off due to the inevitable drought at the end of Act II, Lockstock bellows one final, "Hail, Malthus!", an homage to the English visionary who accurately predicted how the Urinetown tale would ultimately end.

Naming Conventions

If you read the script excerpt I included in the last post, then you have an idea how Marc Blitzstein went about naming the characters in The Cradle Will Rock, with a strong "name as label" convention:  Mr. Mister, Editor Daily, Dr. Specialist, Larry Foreman, Reverend Salvation, and Harry Druggist.  Urinetown pays homage to this production by using the same conventions: the determined Bobby Strong, the rich and well-dressed Mr. Cladwell, the optimistic Hope Cladwell, the miserly Miss Pennywise, and the brutal and well-armed Officers Lockstock and Barrel.

These last two deserve some special discussion.  It is not until Act II that the audience first becomes aware of the naming joke - both names are not spoken together before intermission. But even this joke has layers.  The names Lockstock and Barrel are obviously referring to the various parts of a gun, which both characters carry in the execution of their police brutality. But the cliché phrase "lock, stock, and barrel" also commonly implies everything, or completeness.  It is not an accident that in every scene in the show, these two characters represent the entire police force (leading to more jokes about the two-membered team). Only in the Cop Song do other cops appear, and here they appear to be only symbolic.

Greg Kotis draws upon another uniquely American pop culture convention for the names of some of the remaining characters - what I'll call the Dick Tracy naming convention.  Robbie the Stockfish, Soupy Sue, Little Becky Two-Shoes, Tiny Tom, Billy Boy Bill, etc., all are names squarely rooted in the American tradition, but storybook names, without a sense of reality about them.  This is a deliberate choice on Kotis's part, which will be the subject of a future discussion.

Rock the Cradle

Marc Blitzstein was an early 20th-century American composer and lyricist, who (not coincidentally) produced one of the earliest translations of The Threepenny Opera into English.  In 1937, he wrote an abstract, pro-union musical called The Cradle Will Rock, which featured a Socialist revolt against the rich, capitalist bourgeoisie (sound familiar again?). Funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), it was directed by Orson Welles, and produced by John Houseman.

Just days before its Broadway premiere, the federal government shut down the production due to its "communist, un-American message". Undeterred, Blitzstein took to the stage on opening night with just his piano, and was determined to play and perform the entire score by himself.  The cast members, most of whom were in attendance, stood from their seats one-by-one on cue, and delivered their lines dramatically from the house.  A terrific story about resisting government oppression, in the form of a musical about resisting government oppression, this story is brilliantly told in John Houseman's autobiography, Runthrough, and also in movie form (The Cradle Will Rock, 1999), if you wish to dig deeper.

My purpose here is to highlight yet another strong influence on the writers of Urinetown. Besides matching the original thematic material, one of the scenes in Urinetown appears to be directly modelled on one from The Cradle Will Rock.  See if you can tell which one I'm talking about.  As a side note, pay particular attention to the names of the characters:

The Cradle Will Rock - Scene 10 - Click Here

Early Influences

One of the most obvious and early influences on the writers of Urinetown is The Threepenny Opera, a musical play written in 1928 by German writer Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill.  This dark and satirical work offers up a Socialist critique of the capitalist economic system (sound familiar?).  We'll be talking more about Brecht in the days ahead, but for now I want to focus on the musical style of Kurt Weill.

I have heard music directors wonder aloud why the writers of Urinetown bothered to include an overture at all; the songs in Urinetown aren't particularly melodic, the original pit orchestra was very small, and the overture is very short (only about a minute long).  I think the answer lies in a very specific homage that Mark Hollmann is making to Weill's Threepenny Opera.  Listen to the two musical clips below, and see if you think I'm right.

First, the overture from The Threepenny Opera.  Imagine this overture being played a bit faster:

Next, the short overture from Urinetown.  Notice how the instrumentation compares to that of the previous clip (especially the piano and clarinet scoring):

If you want to go deeper, listen on your own to a couple of songs from The Threepenny Opera (e.g., No They Can't Song, Pirate Jenny) and I think they'll tend to remind you of a few of the works found in Urinetown.

A Musical About Musicals

Urinetown is, above all else, a show about musical theatre.  It lovingly (and sometimes cynically) pokes fun of musical theatre conventions and specific productions, most of which were written before you were born, and some of which were written before your grandparents were born.  In the coming days, I'm going to explore with you some of the specific shows and conventions that Urinetown quotes, parodies, and pokes.  It's not absolutely necessary to be familiar with all of the historical allusions hidden in the script and score in order to produce a great show, but I think it makes for a richer experience for you to know what the heck you are singing about.

Documents

This page will be the source for the most up-to-date versions of our rehearsal schedule, the scene plot, the cast plot, and the script and score.  The small box to the right labelled "Important Documents" will take you to the appropriate pages.

The rehearsal schedule shows not only the times and dates of the scheduled rehearsals, but also includes what will be taught, staged, or choreographed that day.  While we do not plan to change our scheduled rehearsal times, the material that we plan to cover may change somewhat depending on how fast we find ourselves moving through the show.

The Scene Plot describes the nomenclature for each of the scenes in the show, and can be used in conjunction with the Cast Plot to determine what scenes your character is in.  The Cast Plot also defines which character you play in each scene (if you are playing more than one).

The Script and Score links are available to you for downloading these documents before the rehearsal process begins.

The documents pages may be updated with additional info from time to time.  Enter your email in the "Follow by Email" box to the right, and you'll automatically be notified if there are any site changes or announcements regarding the production process.

Casting Is Complete!

After many hours of auditions, we finally have our cast for Urinetown!  A big thank you to all those who participated, especially those for whom this was uncharted territory.  

The cast list is posted here - don't worry if these character names don't mean anything to you yet; they mean something to me.  Soon, I'll begin posting some information you may find useful before we begin the rehearsal process.  Hail, Malthus!