Urinetown was one of the strangest performances I have ever seen, It was a very entertaining play and one I would recommend for people to see. The play seems to have a real depression era feel to it, and has a real poor and dark tone to it, however the characters are often upbeat and whacky. The main conflict of the play is that the world's water supply is dwindling and therefore people must pay to use the toilet, however the poor can not afford to use the bathroom. The conflict therefore is between Bobby Strong (the leader of the poor) and Cladwell (the man in charge of all toilets), Bobby represents dreams while Cladwell seems to represent reality. Bobby is always looking to the future and hoping to change the lives of everyone for the greater good, and Cladwell knows that some people will have to go to "Urinetown" so that others can simply survive. The climax of the play is when Bobby learns that Urinetown is just a made up place they tell people about, and that they're actually killing the people they supposedly send there, then they kill Bobby. The poor characters in the play just want the freedom to pee while the upper class characters just want to maintain the Earth, the people are also the subject matter for which this play is set. The idea of the play is that it is going to cost people money to maintain the Earth and in some instances, it will cost people their lives. This play meant a lot to me, I really enjoyed the undertone of the play, pretty much stating that even though the government seems like they're terrible, heartless people who constantly are looking out only for themselves, may have a bigger picture in mind. Urinetown was one of those plays where the bad guys are bad people but their intentions are right on, you find out in the end of the play that if Cladwell had not been charging people to use the bathroom the water supply would have ran out years ago. Cladwell in the end seems to be the good guy who just went about it the wrong way. The show is played out in Dramatic structure, they have the introduction and let you know all that is going on throughout the play until finally it ends in catastrophe. Urinetown was an eye-opening experience for me though, I am not a big fan of theatre I prefer movies to plays 10 out of 10 times, however I enjoyed my night out on this performance. The character of Officer Lockstock was obviously the best part of the show, he played to the audience beautifully, has a real stage voice and I was shocked because it was a school production which are usually not too good, but Marty Labbe who played Lockstock did a tremendous job. The actor in the play who seems to have a real future in acting was Stephanie Obi who played the role of "Little Sally", her mannerisms and timing really made the play, she seemed to ground the other actors who were really over-acting, this play was a Daytona State College production and if others are anything like that performance, I might be going to see a few plays.
Felner, Mira : The World of Theatre.
www.ibdb.com; urinetown.
