‘Urinetown’ a joke worth experiencing

"Urinetown" is unusual for a lot of reasons -- that title, for one -- but what I've always found most amusing about the 2001 Broadway musical is the way it intentionally disguises just how skillfully silly and enjoyably unimportant the script is.

First, there's that score. It sounds like something left over from "Threepenny Opera," which means most of the tunes aren't hummable and are overstuffed with lyrics brimming with social meaning.

Then there's that plot. A Brechtian tale of woe about the horror of an unfeeling society. Surely all this angst must be a metaphor for some major theme about man's inhumanity to man.

Instead, it's a light-hearted romp making fun of some theatrical traditions.

The plot doesn't begin to suggest the quality. Let's just say a water shortage has forced the Big City to take tough measures. Anyone caught not paying the required tax while peeing is sentenced to an unseen place called Urinetown.

When young leading man Bobby (Mark Weinberg) witnesses the capture of his father (Drew Yonemori), he organizes a protest organization to try to overcome the villain behind it all -- that paean to big-company indifference, Caldwell B. Cladwell, in the person of actor Rob Kastil. Even Cladwell's daughter, Hope (Penni Mendez), joins the group.

But just to show this is not like other musicals, even while the revolutionaries win, Hope winds up destroying the company with her well-intentioned, but ineffective business practices.

The show makes fun of the kind of "hope is in the sky" anthems that have driven some of us theater-lovers loony, thanks to the likes of "Ragtime" and "Les Miserables." The lovable smartass libretto of "Urinetown" suggests musicals might be more angelic if they didn't serve up so much holier-than-thou optimism.

This production is given a larger-than-life performance by Kastil. He's a hodgepodge of Al Capp villains with just a touch of Daddy Warbucks, so that we really enjoy hating him. He's a first-rate actor to boot.

Weinberg has the classically wholesome, well-trained voice we need from a male ingenue. And the chorus -- especially when bathed in Shawn Heckler's harsh, red lighting -- frequently suggests an untamed crowd who at any moment might turn dangerous.

Director Walter Niejadlik doesn't quite get as much power or humor from the script as he could simply because too many of the characters are not well defined. We don't always recognize what types of people these characters are spoofing, so that when their ironic moment comes, we don't always get the joke.

"Urinetown" is pleasant and lightly campy, when it should be hysterically funny and full of punch. But it remains a joke worth experiencing.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.