>>PREVIEW
URINETOWN
Starts September 5
Ground Zero Theatre and Hit and Myth Productions
The Grand Theatre (Theatre Junction)
It seems fitting that, as the summer winds down in the wake of Calgary’s rejuvenated Fringe Festival, the 2006-07 theatre season is opening with one of the most colossal Fringe success stories of all time – a big, bold musical with the vile little name of Urinetown.
After its 1999 première at the New York International Fringe Festival, Urinetown went on to become the quintessential Fringe success story, opening as a full-fledged Broadway production in 2001 after an off-Broadway run, winning three Tony Awards, including Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical. None too shabby for a show that, before its Fringe run, creators Greg Kotis and Mark Hallmann pitched unsuccessfully to more than 100 agents, theatres, and development organizations.
Despite the musical’s humble beginnings in a former auto shop, Urinetown has never been a small production, with a large cast belting out sprawling song and dance numbers that pay homage to classic musicals like West Side Story and Les Miserables. Staged in The Grand, the upcoming co-production between Ground Zero Theatre and Hit and Myth Productions has contracted a total of 40 cast members and crew to populate, create and manage designer Terry Gunvordahl’s two-level, rust-stained steel set.
It’s a scale that co-directors Mark Bellamy and Kevin McKendrick credit largely to the involvement of newcomer Hit and Myth, the brainchild of businessman-turned-producer Joel Cochrane, half of a partnership that has been fully behind the project for nearly a year.
"We were told from the beginning that we’re doing this full out, not cutting corners," says Bellamy. "(We were told) ‘There will be 16 lav mics (clip-on stage microphones), we will build you a big set, you will get the Grand Theatre, we will make all the costumes.’ It’s on the order of something like Stratford or Shaw."
And it wasn’t only the instruments of technical production that Urinetown was given.
"We found that the Calgary community had everything we needed in terms of talent," says McKendrick, noting that local actors are often ironically pulled out of town while large musical productions that do eventually come to Calgary, like last season’s Guys and Dolls, are produced as touring shows. "We didn’t learn that until auditions, and it just knocked us on our asses. We could have cast it many times over."
In addition to the considerable cachet of the production’s 16 cast members, a who’s who of Calgary’s musical theatre talent, and the soundscape provided by its five-piece band, Urinetown will also have the advantage of The Grand’s own distinctive space – exposed red brick and a towering ceiling.
"We get to use the natural architecture, the brick and the metal," says McKendrick, who opened the space in April as the director of The Grand’s inaugural play, Far Away. "If you put it on the stage of Theatre Calgary, it would look too pretty, too pristine."
Grown from a sort of urine-fuelled epiphany in the streets of Paris – cash-strapped at the end of a long backpacking trip and staring at one of the city’s pay toilets – Kotis’ script imagines a dystopian future that would certainly never be described as pristine.
Facing a water shortage and the resulting "Great Stink," the government opts to outlaw public urination and hand control of the mandated pay toilets to the gluttonous corporate stewardship of Cladwell B. Cladwell’s (Tim Koetting) Urine Good Company. But when Cladwell’s idealistic daughter, Hope (Victoria Lamond), returns from The Most Expensive University in the World and meets the assistant custodian for the filthiest public urinal in town, Bobby Strong (Nattras), the seeds are sown for starcrossed love, class warfare and other likewise essential ingredients for musical fare.
Often taking aim at its own unappetizing premise (after one of the show’s self-aware narrators, Officer Lockstock, mentions that nothing kills a show like exposition, Little Sally responds by pointing out that bad subject matter and a bad title could kill it just as quickly), Urinetown is a musical that revels in its grimy esthetic. During the show’s two-year run at the Henry Miller Theatre (which has since been closed), the building was given a boarded-up facade and ruined interior. However, despite the fact that musicals are often associated with the pomp and opulence that Urinetown so gleefully muddies, Bellamy points out that it doesn’t take beauty to make a musical grand.
"It doesn’t have pretty costumes, but neither does Les Miserables. It may not be pretty, but it’s spectacular," says Bellamy. "And it does have elements of the glitzy glam, full-on production number, sequins and sparkles, and big gushy, gooey choreography. It runs the gamut of all those things. So it’s got elements of every musical."
In fact, one of Urinetown’s principal draws – and no doubt its key ingredient on its trip from Fringe to Broadway – has always been its strong connection to musical theatre traditions. Its central plot focuses on the quintessential story of love and class, and Hope’s ascent into a populist "saviour" is a clear parallel to Evita. Even as it sends up the conventions of the genre, the show remains at its core a musical – albeit one in which the idea of public urination factors heavily.
"It’s a loving wink to musical theatre," says Bellamy. "Parody implies that it’s taking the piss out of them, and it’s not. It’s actually embracing every musical form and every musical cliché in a loving way."
"(Those not familiar with musicals) may not know the musicals they’re winking at, but they’re enthralled," adds McKendrick. "You don’t have to know anything about musical theatre, or anything about the history, it’s a big, broad, highly enjoyable evening in the theatre."
Though neither Bellamy or McKendrick are strangers to musical production – Bellamy himself directed the Betty-winning production of Little Mercy’s First Murder – they both concede that it has been years since either tackled a project as large as Urinetown. Two production companies, two directors, 16 performers and a host of production crew, all set to take Calgary’s newest stage in a production whose scale is every inch Broadway.
"Talk to me in October," says Bellamy. "I’ll be speaking to you from my hospital bed." |
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