In the fall of 2001, I was directing a particularly broad-humored version of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, 1885. I like to direct Gilbert and Sullivan with high energy, and very physical humor, with virtually no joke considered too crass to include (in a way that I firmly believe Gilbert and Sullivan would approve of, were they alive today. But don't try to tell that to any of the local Gilbert & Sullivan societies, which generally do not hold me in high regard.) As an example of the delicate humor I used in this exquisite little operetta, I dressed one of my stage crew as a Sumo wrestler (with a gigantic flesh-colored fat suit, and loin cloth), and had him bend over deeply to pick up a prop onstage, mooning the audience and showing some significant fat-suit crack in the process. This wasn't Noel Coward.
The Tuesday before tech week was the 11th of September, 2001. You don't need me to remind you of the events of that day. I cancelled our rehearsal that night, over the objections of some of the cast members who were accustomed to my never cancelling a rehearsal for virtually any reason. But these were early days, and the enormity of what had just happened hadn't yet universally sunk in. We resumed rehearsals the next night, but found it difficult to achieve the level of silliness we needed, given the preoccupations of everyone's minds. I addressed the cast on that first day back, something about "not letting the terrorists win", which was, of course, complete nonsense -- the terrorists already had a huge win, and almost certainly didn't give a crap about our little North Shore production of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.
On opening night, I was asked to give a short speech to the VIP crowd that was having cocktails in the lounge next to the theatre. Again, I felt I needed to address the dreaded 9/11 question somehow - it was difficult in those days to have a conversation and not address it - and I was at sea for what to say. Was it even appropriate to be attending a frivolous comedy? I ended up with some pablum about moving on, and learning to laugh, and I'm embarrassed to even recall the speech. In the end, I didn't need to say a word - the audiences laughed uproariously all by themselves, even at the butt jokes.
Do you remember being told, after David Letterman went back on the air with the Late Show less than week after 9/11, how Dave "taught us all how to laugh again"? Crap. I don't know about you, but I didn't need to learn how to laugh again from anybody, and neither did you. Humor is inextricably woven right into the human condition, and we laugh all the time at "inappropriate" moments.
We laugh during Saturday Night Live while hundreds are being gunned down in the Sudan. We laugh having a drink with our friends, while thousands of children under the age of five die of starvation. We laugh at political jokes, and religious jokes, and blonde jokes, and even urine jokes, all while simultaneously, other people are experiencing the most abject misery possible. Is that inappropriate? Maybe, but I am absolutely convinced that it is also completely necessary. Humor is the relief valve that all humans use to laugh off the suffering which goes on every single day. It stops our pathetic brains from overheating with empathy. It is a sign and signal of being human.
If there is one (and possibly only one) noble thing about the original Urinetown production in New York, it is the timing of their Broadway opening. Urinetown was one of the very few off-Broadway productions successful enough to move to an actual Broadway house (the Henry Miller Theatre) for a formal Broadway opening night: September 13, 2001.
Needless to say, their opening night was cancelled, and all of Broadway went dark for a week. But Urinetown finally opened on Broadway, and was the first show to do so post-9/11. Every single reviewer that night wrote about the timing of the opening -- and then raved about the hilarity of the production. Audiences loved it, and no one had to teach them how. Humor is always inappropriate; that's why it's so valuable.
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