‘Urinetown’ Review: More Than Toilet Humor

About halfway through the first act of “Urinetown,” the characters Hope Cladwell and Bobby Strong reveal their emotions and desires in “Follow Your Heart.” Their names could have been lifted from a Depression-era musical, and the song itself evokes such romantic classics of that time as “I Only Have Eyes for You.”

“We all want a world / Filled with peace and with joy,” Hope (the comic revelation Stephanie Styles) and Bobby (an effortlessly charismatic Jordan Fisher, fresh from a stint as Orpheus in “Hadestown”) sing in the Encores! revival that opened Wednesday night at New York City Center. “With plenty of water for each girl and boy,” they continue.

You see, our lovebirds, whom Fisher and Styles portray with a precisely calibrated mix of earnestness and goofiness, live in a dystopian world where water is scarce. Exacting payment for the privilege of peeing has become a profitable business for Hope’s tycoon father, Caldwell B. Cladwell (Rainn Wilson, not quite villainous enough), the head of the Urine Good Company corporation.

Bobby, on the other hand, is very much from the downtrodden side of the tracks. More specifically he’s the assistant custodian at the public toilet known as Amenity No. 9, run by the imperious Penelope Pennywise (Keala Settle, amped up to 11 as if rehearsing for Norma Desmond).

The jarring reference to a commodity perhaps more essential than peace and joy in such a lovely number confirms that the “Urinetown” team of Mark Hollmann (music and lyrics) and Greg Kotis (book and lyrics) was not just a new version of Harry Warren and Al Dubin, the bards of 1930s Warner Bros. musicals. A bespoke pastiche of a specific vintage style, “Follow Your Heart” also contains a streak of modern sarcasm and political commentary that helps explain why “Urinetown” has aged so remarkably well since its premiere a little more than a quarter of a century ago.

The show, which started life at the International New York Fringe Festival in 1999, had an Off Broadway run in the spring of 2001 and reopened on Broadway on Sept. 20 that same year. It won the Tony Awards for best book, original score and direction of a musical, and ran for two and a half years. The inclusion of “Urinetown” — an unlikely hit but nevertheless a hit — in Encores! underlines the mission drift of a series that used to be dedicated to flops and obscurities but nowadays simply “revisits the archives of American musical theater.”