URINETOWN: THE MUSICAL by Pangdemonium

“Economical Relief Pricing (ERP)”

Reviewer: Edward Eng
Performance: 29 September 2019

This is the sort of show where people fall in love over the course of a single song. But don’t fret: Pangdemonium’s Urinetown is the most fun you’ll have at a locally staged musical this year. It is charming and mad, and it happens to be the only American musical I’ve seen that has bothered to take on late capitalism and the government-industrial complex.

Urinetown’s premise is simple satire: the most expensive city in the world is having a water crisis and the only solution, its mayor argues, is to raise public toilet entry fees yet another time. This benefits the bribe-paying Urine Good Company (UGC), which towers over the population as the sole owner of toilets in the city. The police and custodians are in it too, enforcing the fee hike with rigid authority. The dissidents – those who pee in the bushes – are threatened with exile. The oppression becomes too much for the citizens to bear, and they come out in proletariat revolution.

The unlikely hero, played by Benjamin Chow, is toilet custodian Bobby Strong. Chow wears an archetypal charisma that can only be matched by the earnestness of co-star Mina Kaye’s character, Hope. Hope, of course, happens to be the good daughter of morally repugnant UGC magnate Caldwell. Tension between familial stability and the greater good ensues when Bobby and Hope fall in love.

But where Greg Kotis’ musical shines is in its irreverence towards its source material – most obviously, Les Misérables. Tracie Pang’s directorial hand in Urinetownis deft this time, sidestepping the question of whether the socialist ideals achieved by the show’s end were indeed the trigger for environmental collapse – Caldwell warns early on that free toilets will destroy the water table – in favour of rampant comedy. I enjoyed Pang’s lighthearted approach, as the text by itself seems too eager to accept the outcomes of Malthus’ controversial theory.

The ensemble is also mostly excellent, although it is hard to hear past the put-on accents, which sometimes dislocates Urinetownat the wrong places. In particular, the fourth-wall-breaking duo of Adrian Pang’s Officer Lockstock and Mae Elliessa’s street urchin Little Sally are welcome touches of self-referentiality to the otherwise by-the-numbers dramaturgy of the musical. Sean Ghazi as the huffing UGC tycoon and Jo Tan in the commoner-who-turns-out-to-be-a-long-lost-mother trope also provide strong support for the leading couple. On the design front, James Tan’s chameleon lighting is superlative against the more straightforward Broadway-style set by Eucien Chia.

I suppose my only real gripe with this self-referential style is that it pulls its punches on relatively serious subjects, which leaves me wondering if this could be missed opportunity for deeper satire. But to come across a big musical that has enough heart to laugh at the absurdities of late capitalism? That’s sick!