Is URINETOWN the most overtly political modern musical?

[Alex Kulak2]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 12:50am

The recent thread about Trump's musical theatre counterpart got me thinking about Urinetown (my answer to the question is Cladwell). Lots of show's have messages of rising up against the establishment, fighting for the rights of the marginalized, and the fine line between financial security and selling out, but it's almost always subtext. Urinetown seems to be one of the few musicals of the last 50 years that directly deals with a political debate: capitalism vs. socialism. This is fitting, given that the play is a send-up to Bertolt Brecht's epic theatre. What do you think?

[latitudex1]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 2:32am

My first thought would be the 1990 Sondheim work Assassins. I view it as a magnifying glass that examines the "American Dream" and American democracy through the viewpoints of some truly "lost" people.

ETA: And Chess, in all of its convoluted mess, is intended to be a Cold War allegory.

Updated On: 4/24/20 at 02:32 AM

[blaxx]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 6:27am

But Urinetown is not solely political; in fact, it is more of a parody of more legit political musicals like The Cradle Will Rock - now that's heavier political stuff.

I find other musicals just as heavy in politics, some more in your face than others: Evita, Newsies, Hamilton, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, 1776, The Civil War, Allegiance, Fiorello!, and the famous Kander & Ebb "political trilogy":Cabaret, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Scottsboro Boys. 

Updated On: 4/24/20 at 06:27 AM

[binau]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 6:58am

I don’t know Urinetown well, but I wonder how ‘woke’ Broadway audiences would respond to the ending?

[Falsettolands]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 9:07am

I would argue that Soft Power has it beat.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 10:29am

Emojiland was about the old emojis working to build a “firewall” around Emojiland to prevent the new emojis from coming into their land.

[darquegk]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 11:34am

Yeah, that bizarre final joke in “Urinetown” is obviously tongue in cheek, but may not have aged well.

I’m not sure audiences will laugh today at “sure, socialism has great ideals, but fascism actually WORKS” the same as they did twenty years ago. It’s obviously just a raspberry blown at Brechtian political theatre, not a true political statement, but I think people are uneasy about “fun fascist iconography” today.

[JBroadway]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 1:10pm

The question of "most political" is a tricky one to answer. How would one measure that? You could argue that if a show makes a political statement, it's just as political as any other show that makes a political statement. I suppose some shows will have subtle, very subtextual political statements, requiring thorough analysis to pick apart. Or some shows might include political statements, while the show as a whole focuses on non-political issues. You also may see cases where the show is about politics, or political figures, but doesn't necessary make a strong political statement about the subject matter - it might just present the facts of the situation. 

But if I'm interpreting the OP's question correctly, it's not necessarily about which one is the "most overtly political" (i.e "which overtly political show is, in itself, presenting the most political subject matter or viewpoint?" but rather which one is the "most overtly political" in the sense of "of all the musicals that deal with politics in any way, which one does it most overtly." It's a slight semantical difference in how you interpret the question, but I think the latter is easier to measure, and it seems like it might have been what the OP was asking.

The trouble is there are a lot of musicals that present political messages pretty overtly. So we sort of have to split hairs a little bit if you want to argue which one is the most overtly political. So I guess you just have to ask "in which musical is the political message the LEAST veiled by metaphor or allegory?" and then "of the shows that have no metaphor or allegory, which ones speak most directly to what's happening right now?" and then, "of the shows that speak directly to what's happening right now, which of them presents an issue that is most prominently in the zeitgeist and the social discourse at the time it's produced?" 

I would say something like Soft Power ticks most of those boxes, probably moreso than Urinetown IMO. 

Urinetown is hard, because it does deal with the political issues in a way that is overt and direct within the context of the story. The characters have to  fight over which political ideology serves the people best. And yet, we as a society are not currently facing a mass water-shortage that would result in the scenario presented in the show (*knock on wood*). Our debate over socialism vs. capitalism manifests more directly in other issues like health care, food resources, housing, etc. So you could argue that the imaginary dystopia - though directly responding to political issues - is not as overt as other shows, because it has that one thin layer of separation from reality. 

[Kad]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 1:27pm

I love Urinetown, but it's less of a political satire than it is a satire on musical theatre and, as was mentioned, Brecht/Weill pieces specifically. I don't think it really has a coherent political statement, and that's by design.

[Stage Door Sally]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 2:14pm

Kad said: "I love Urinetown, but it's less of a political satire than it is a satire on musical theatre and, as was mentioned, Brecht/Weill pieces specifically. I don't think it really has a coherent political statement, and that's by design."

I agree with Kad, Urinetown is my favorite modern musical, and I desperately want to see it revived again with Jeff McCarthy as Officer Lockstock.

[Broadway61004]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 2:18pm

qolbinau said: "I don’t know Urinetown well, but I wonder how ‘woke’ Broadway audiences would respond to the ending?"

Either I'm forgetting something about the ending or I'm so out of touch with "woke" Broadway audiences that I'm missing what they could possibly be upset about.  Although I'm sure they could come up with something.

[zainmax]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 2:36pm

Frank Wildhorn’s Civil War?

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 2:37pm

I didn’t even make the Brecht/Weill connection but I don’t think I had been introduced to Threepenny Opera and their other works yet when I first saw Urinetown.

[darquegk]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 3:12pm

I've always wanted a television version, with Will Arnett and Will Forte as Lockstock and Barrel.

For years, I wanted Alec Baldwin as Cladwell, but after his increasing boredom playing a parody Trump, I doubt he'd take the role.

[Kad]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 3:29pm

CATSNYrevival said: "I didn’t even make the Brecht/Weill connection but I don’t think I had been introduced to Threepenny Opera and their other works yet when I first saw Urinetown."

Urinetown’s overture is a very close homage to Threepenny’s. 

[Alex Kulak2]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 4:05pm

The whole score is filled with Kurt Weill-style music, even down to the klezmeresque orchestrations

[binau]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 4:11pm

Broadway61004 said: "qolbinau said: "I don’t know Urinetown well, but I wonder how ‘woke’ Broadway audiences would respond to the ending?"

Either I'm forgetting something about the ending or I'm so out of touch with "woke" Broadway audiences that I'm missing what they could possibly be upset about. Although I'm sure they could come up with something."

If I recall, doesn’t it end with suggesting that the capitalist rationing of water and making it a ‘privilege to pee’ as opposed to it being a <Bernie sanders> ‘UMAN RIGHT</Bernie sanders>  ironically the right decision? It definitely shocked me! I might have misremembered what happened though. 

[Broadway61004]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 4:25pm

qolbinau said: "Broadway61004 said: "qolbinau said: "I don’t know Urinetown well, but I wonder how ‘woke’ Broadway audiences would respond to the ending?"

Either I'm forgetting something about the ending or I'm so out of touch with "woke" Broadway audiences that I'm missing what they could possibly be upset about. Although I'm sure they could come up with something."

If I recall, doesn’t it end with suggesting that the capitalist rationing of water and making it a ‘privilege to pee’ as opposed to it beinga ‘UMAN RIGHTironically the right decision? It definitely shocked me! I might have misremembered what happened though."

Ah, very true.  No, you're remembering it right.  I guess I would hope that most audiences would get the satire in the ending, but yes, I could definitely see some folks upset with that message.

[latitudex1]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 4:32pm

I would argue that it's fascist twist at the end is the only reason it made it to Broadway in that decade in the first place. Not only is it subversive and a comedic send up to shows like The Threepenny Opera, most of the people producing works for Broadway probably aren't socialists or socially-minded democrats.

True musical commentaries on the state of modern politics have been relegated to Off-Broadway houses or haven't played in New York at all. What's been mounted recently are fun or "easy" melodramatic musicals with recognizable properties or about broadly famous or recognizable subjects.

[Fan123]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 5:28pm

ICYMI, a new production of 'Urinetown' is being optimistically planned for the 2021/2022 season at Redhouse in Syracuse, NY, with Hunter Foster to direct.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Hunter-Foster-to-Direct-URINETOWN-20th-Anniversary-Production-at-Redhouse-Arts-Center-20200421

Regardless of how it was originally intended, I think that the show's ending would work in current times. I predict that the 'socialism' side of the argument would come across as individualism today. Campaigning for your (and everyone's) right to go about life freely, even if doing so may screw things up for the community? Putting this into the mouths of the heroes of the show, exaggeratedly demonising the other side of the argument, and then questioning that entire outlook at the end. Sounds interesting to me.

Otherwise, surprisingly 'Billy Elliot' came to my mind in terms of the most overtly political modern musicals. Based on my own subjective criterion of shows that made me actually think about the pros and cons of a political question - again, the individual vs the community.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 7:10pm

I most recently saw Urinetown when Duke's Eye Production did it at the P.I.T. I hadn't seen it since Dec 2016 in Washington DC (you can imagine what that was like considering what had gone on the month before). Even in a tiny blackbox theatre with costumes that looked like they probably belonged to the actors, the heavy humor hit pretty hard. The "when the Amazon dried up" line elicited laughs as well as winces considering the rainforest fires were in the news at the time. And maybe it was the way she played it, but Hope Cladwell came across as more of a complacent "useful idiot" type than ever before.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 4/24/20 at 10:48pm

Kad said: "I love Urinetown, but it's less of a political satire than it is a satire on musical theatre and, as was mentioned, Brecht/Weill pieces specifically. I don't think it really has a coherent political statement, and that's by design."

I agree with Kad and others who expressed similar opinions.

I thoroughly enjoyed URINETOWN, but I found it about as "overtly political" as DAMES AT SEA.

[Erzlump]

Posted: 4/25/20 at 11:31am

qolbinau said: "Broadway61004 said: "qolbinau said: "I don’t know Urinetown well, but I wonder how ‘woke’ Broadway audiences would respond to the ending?"

Either I'm forgetting something about the ending or I'm so out of touch with "woke" Broadway audiences that I'm missing what they could possibly be upset about. Although I'm sure they could come up with something."

If I recall, doesn’t it end with suggesting that the capitalist rationing of water and making it a ‘privilege to pee’ as opposed to it beinga ‘UMAN RIGHTironically the right decision? It definitely shocked me! I might have misremembered what happened though."

 

Adding to the discussion around the ending, I wanted to reference this thread from 2006 in which the "Hail Malthus" line is explained in more detail: https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.php?thread=866077

 

[Kad]

Posted: 4/25/20 at 11:42am

It’s not so much an endorsement of Cladwell’s tyrannical capitalist solution as it is an acknowledgement that resources are finite yet the population continuously grows and that is not sustainable without changing how we live our lives.

But, again, this isn’t presented as a thesis- it’s presented as a gotcha! twist sort of ending. It’s a cynical deflation of the classic musical theatre happy ending. 

I think looking at the era in which Urinetown was written and debuted is helpful- the late 90s/early 00s were rife with postmodern, cynical, edgy sort of comedy like South Park, Family Guy, the early years of Jon Stewart’s tenure on the Daily Show, etc. It was a push back on the cultural and economic excesses of the 90s. Urinetown is maybe a more refined version of it, but I think you can easily include it in that wave of comedy. The stuff from this era was more content to skewer sacred cows and mock everybody than preach any sort of coherent political message and incite change. 

Updated On: 4/25/20 at 11:42 AM

[Wayman_Wong]

Posted: 4/25/20 at 3:49pm

It would be tough to beat ''Soft Power'' for ''most overtly political modern musical.'' It's a satirical and inverted version of ''The King and I.'' The Rodgers & Hammerstein classic focused on a white woman bringing the ''enlightenment'' and education of the West to a ''barbaric'' Asian male leader who believes in slavery and polygamy. In David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori's reinvention, a Chinese movie producer comes to the U.S. and falls in love with a female American politician, named Hillary Clinton nonetheless. They dance a polka in an homage to ''Shall We Dance?'' from ''The King and I.'' Politically, the Chinese producer sticks up for his country's more authoritarian government. But Hillary does a torch song called ''Democracy'' and how it may be heavily flawed, but she still believes in it. The show even ends with a hopeful hymn-like version of it. Along the way, ''Soft Power'' lampoons the U.S. culture and politics with songs about our campaigns, the electoral college and gun ownership. There are allusions to the current president in the White House, but he's never mentioned by name. As much as ''Soft Power'' playfully mocks America, you also get the sense that its creators and the cast really care deeply about this country, and it's what makes the closing ''Democracy'' reprise so moving. 

Updated On: 4/25/20 at 03:49 PM