‘Urinetown’
City Center Encores!
Through February 16

When “Urinetown” opened in September 2001, it was a very welcome piece of musical comedy when, in the aftermath of 9/11, we needed it most. When I saw it that fall, I had two immediate reactions: One, it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in the theater; two, it was so “inside baseball,” or, as we would say today, so “meta” that I couldn’t imagine how it could be any kind of a hit.

“Urinetown” is back, for two weeks anyhow, and it seems both as relevant — there’s a joke about tariffs in the first scene — and as delightfully esoteric as ever. 

For those who didn’t see the original production or listen to the highly recommended original Broadway cast album, here’s the basic idea. “Urinetown” takes as its point of departure the politically charged, left-leaning progressive theater of the Great Depression era, both straight plays, like Clifford Odets’s “Waiting for Lefty” (1935), and musical works, like Harold Rome’s “Pins and Needles” (1937) and Marc Blitzstein’s “The Cradle Will Rock” (1937), all of which were essentially intended as pro-labor union propaganda. Also, these plays were profoundly influenced by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Threepenny Opera,” which had its premiere in 1928 at Berlin, as well as their “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” (1930).

The plot of “Cradle Will Rock” centers on heroic workers and union organizers who stand up to the tyranny of the megalomaniacal bosses and corrupt politicians who control everything. The plot of “Urinetown” centers on heroic workers in a public amenity (i.e., a restroom) who stand up against megalomaniacal capitalists who force the entire city to use their facilities and pay dearly for the privilege. 

It’s these oligarchs, as we would say in this era, who wield all the power of an unlawful monopoly over everyone’s “private business.” As the character Hope Cladwell says in Act One, “Gosh Daddy, I never realized large, monopolizing corporations could be such a force for good in the world.”

To my surprise, there were enough hardcore theater nerds who were in on the joke to make the show a hit two decades ago — it won three Tony awards and ran for three years. To the credit of authors Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann, “Urinetown” also pokes fun at other, more recent “serious” shows about the plight of humanity — shows that take themselves a might too seriously, none more so than “Les Miserables.” 

To be sure, the audience members at City Center Encores! were obviously so well-versed in musical theater lore that they didn’t miss a single in-joke. At the same time, though, the goings-on are so enjoyable that you can laugh even if you’re not very familiar with the source material being spoofed. It’s rather like two classic Mel Brooks movies, “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein”: They’re still uproariously funny even to younger, more contemporary audiences who have never seen a Randolph Scott Western or a classic 1930s Universal Pictures horror film.

The cast is excellent, especially Greg Hildreth as Officer Lockstock, who serves both as both the story’s narrator and one of the key heavies; he has a completely authentic 1930s look and a physical presence reminiscent of both Oliver Hardy and Paul McCullough. The narrative conceit is that Lockstock is continually explaining what’s going on to both Little Sally, an innocent street urchin played by a wise-beyond-her-years Pearl Scarlett Gold.  

Jordan Fisher and Stephanie Styles are note-perfect as Bobby and Hope, the closest thing the show has to a leading man and lady. Still, it’s Rainn Wilson — whom I remember most fondly as Dr. Demento in “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” — who fills the considerable shoes of John Collum as the central bad guy, Caldwell B. Cladwell. Mr. Wilson steals every scene he’s in just as adroitly as Mr. Cladwell and his staff of cut-throat capitalists purloin the pennies of everyone forced to use their pay-to-pee facilities.

“Urinetown” is as tuneful as it is funny; the opening overture is a soprano sax-driven nod to Weill and Brecht’s degenerate tangos and marches. Cladwell’s magnum opus, “Don’t Be the Bunny,” is the demented philosophy aria and the star turn that everyone remembers. “Run Freedom Run” exemplifies the use of mock-folk songs in politically progressive musicals; it could be a page from the Harry Belafonte songbook. There are also mock spirituals and expository songs, even while Officer Lockstock cautions everyone not to dispense too much exposition all at once. 

Roughly 25 years after it was written, “Urinetown” — which could be described as a story about the unexpected consequences of climate change and drought, and ends with a shoutout to Thomas Robert Malthus — feels more timely than ever. It has a kind of “South Park” sensibility that anticipates “Book of Mormon” from 10 years later, in that these are essentially liberals making fun of liberal conceits.  

In an interview in the program, Mr. Hollman states that here is “where the indictment of the musical comes in: beyond parody, we’re saying, ‘Nothing can be solved in a song, nothing can be solved in a musical either.’” Ultimately, “Urinetown” won’t change anything, any more than “Cradle Will Rock” or “Les Mis” ever did, but it proves that even if we’re all on the fast track to oblivion, we can all at least enjoy ourselves along the way.

When Officer Lockstock advises Little Sally that “this is not a happy musical,” she retorts, “It’s still a musical. And when a little girl has been given as many lines as I have, there’s still hope for dreams!”