Urinetown: Dystopian Satire with a Broadway Heart

By Anthony Chase

The cast of Urinetown looking severe: Marc Sacco as Officer Lockstock; Arin Lee Dandes as Little Sally; Sean Ryan as Bobby Strong; Charmagne Chi as Penelope Pennywise; and Penelope Sergi as Hope Cladwell. Photo by Stephen Ganris

Urinetown, now being staged by Second Generation Theatre at Shea’s Smith Theatre, is a wickedly funny, razor-sharp parody of both 1930s agitprop and latter-day Broadway aesthetics.  The result is a musically immaculate, side-splitting night at the theater.

The show is set in a drought-stricken town where private toilets are outlawed and citizens must pay to use public restrooms, all controlled by a greedy corporation called Urine Good Company. Failure to pay the fee, or peeing in the bushes results in banishment to Urinetown, a dreaded place from which nobody ever returns.

Enter Bobby Strong, a passionate young everyman who leads a rebellion against the corrupt system, challenging both the law and society’s acceptance of injustice. Indeed, every flush in Urinetown is a jab at complacency, every song a call to arms in disguise. Urinetown is a hilarious musical satire of the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, environmental collapse, and populism.

Director Louis Colaiacovo keeps the satire brisk and bitingly clear, abetted by Kristy Schupp Cavanagh’s sly choreography, each movement sending up genre conventions with tongue-in-cheek brilliance. The design team, led by Chris Cavanagh (set, lights, sound), crafts a world of drab dystopia, while Lindsay Salamone (costumes) lends the proceedings a cheeky cartoon verisimilitude. Music director Allan Paglia draws a crisp, Weill-esque sound from his excellent onstage band, with Russ Carere’s reed parts evoking just the right note of Berlin-inflected menace.

Of course, it’s the cast that lifts this Urinetown from clever satire to essential theater.

Exuding youthful exuberance and emotional sincerity, Sean Ryan specializes in characters whose journeys hinge on innocence, courage, and heartfelt conviction. Previously seen as the wide-eyed Jonathan in Tick, Tick…Boom! at Second Generation Theatre, and recently swinging across the stage at Lockport Palace Theatre as guileless Tarzan, in Urinetown, he embodies heroic Bobby Strong. With his strapping presence and flame-haired charm, Ryan brings Bobby -- and the show’s most ludicrous moments -- vividly to life.

Penelope Sergi brings a luminous warmth and comic outrageousness to her performance as Hope Cladwell, the daughter of evil corporate executive Caldwell B. Cladwell. Balancing innocent optimism with sharp comedic instincts, she punctuates moments of wholesome sincerity with bursts of physical bravado and wit. It’s a portrayal rooted in 1930s screwball comedy, yet fresh and irrepressibly modern. Her vocal clarity and clever timing is both earnest and enchanting, as she deftly navigates tonal shifts between parody, romance, and fierce activism.

Charmagne Chi makes a commanding, comically menacing Penelope Pennywise, the tough, jaded manager of Public Amenity #9, the poorest and filthiest public restroom in town. She belts out the role’s anthems of bureaucratic tyranny with gusto. Philip Farugia chews the scenery as Caldwell B. Cladwell, a miserly tycoon whose primary goal is to extort the townspeople by relentlessly hiking bathroom fees and gleefully exploiting the poor.  Farugia raises villainy to an art form.

Marc Sacco, who plays Officer Lockstock, has a special gift for cracking me up. As the show’s bold, seemingly humorless narrator and police chief, he’s at once enforcer and winking guide through the satire. Sacco’s dry delivery is perfectly timed. He casts quips so casually that the jokes sometimes almost slip by – until they land like a mallet hitting a gong. His technical precision in Lockstock’s incongruous Broadway poses is irrepressibly funny, and his ability to anchor the meta-narrative as both participant and mocking commentator is brilliant. It’s a brand of effortless professionalism that elevates the entire show.

The supporting cast is uniformly strong. Divine Arin Lee Dandes is a diminutive delight as Little Sally, a precocious, irreverent street urchin and quasi-narrator; the show’s pint-sized conscience, always questioning authority and illuminating hypocrisies. Dandes milks the child-actress bit for all it’s worth as she anchors the show’s moral compass with adorable confidence and brutal honesty. (And before anyone suggests she play Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods -- she already has!)

Thomas Evans adds solid support as Officer Barrel, delighting in the dirty work of law enforcement, even as he hides a secret of his own. Brittany Bassett-Baran is both tragic and vivacious in dual roles as dangerously impulsive Little Becky Two Shoes and bureaucratic lackey Mrs. Millennium. Kristopher Bartolomeo is memorably chaotic as suffering Old Man Strong and violently psychotic Hot Blades Harry.

The tight ensemble: Gretchen Didio as excitable Soupy Sue and as Cladwell’s secretary; David P. Eve as hapless manchild Tiny Tom; Christopher Victor as greedy and cowardly Senator Fipp; and Dan Urtz as Mr. McQueen, Cladwell’s sycophantic and opportunistic assistant; carries off the Brechtian numbers with gusto and style. Consummate clown Nicole Cimato hits the bull’s eye with uncanny accuracy as Bobby’s dramatic mother, weathered yet resilient Ma Strong.

When the show debuted in 2001, they got a lot of mileage out of the off-putting title and distasteful subject matter. In those days, there were also theater goers who might actually have remembered the Federal Theatre Project. Now, almost twenty-five years later, with Urinetown a familiar part of the repertoire, any mischievous element of surprise is gone. Nonetheless a show that raises potent questions of equity and authority still feels urgent and timely.

Urinetown remains a pointed and hilariously subversive entertainment. It may not be a literal call to arms, but it offers a humorous and sympathetic affirmation of both the severity and absurdity of our current political situation. Just as with its Depression-era predecessors, Urinetown proves that laughter and rebellion often begin with ordinary people, united by the courage to say: “I can’t wait any longer!”

Urinetown continues at Shea’s Smith Theatre through November 9, 2025.

Tickets

Thu Oct 30th 7:30 p.m.

Fri Oct 31st 7:30 p.m.

Sat Nov 1st 8 p.m.

Sun Nov 2nd 2 p.m.

Thu Nov 6^th 7:30 p.m.

Fri Nov 7^th 7:30 p.m.

Sat Nov 8th 8 p.m.

Sun Nov 9th 2 p.m.