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?