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The Miami
Vol. 88, Issue 35 | Sept. 27 - Sept. 29, 2010
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HURRICANE
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STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI IN CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA, SINCE 1929
‘Urinetown’ flushes down conventions Ring Theatre satirizes musicals BY DAVID SARGENT STAFF WRITER
LINDSAY BROWN // Photo Editor
FOLLOW YOUR HEART: Juniors Valerie Roche and Ryan Phillips rehearse “Urinetown.”
COMMUTER CONUNDRUM PROWL ON THE PANTHERS ENOUGH PARKING SPOTS, BUT WHO WANTS TO WALK SO FAR? PAGE 5
MIAMI DEFEATED PITTSBURGH, 31-3, ON THURSDAY PAGE 10
This season’s opener at the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre already has the student cast singing praise for its self-depreciating parody, sharp commentary and… toilet humor. “Urinetown,” the highly-acclaimed winner of the 2002 “Best Original Score” Tony Award, is the newest production by the Department of Theatre Arts. A satire on rose-colored musicals, the plot is set in a futuristic totalitarian society where water shortages have led the government to impose taxes on citizens for using the bathroom. Fed up with a hike on the fee to pee, citizens start a revolution. Lynn McNutt, director of the musical, said that the popularity of “Urinetown” is a bit of an accident, as its writers, Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis, originally intended to make more of a shock than a success. “It’s kind of like a ‘South Park’ episode, where they were like, ‘Let’s write a musical that we know nobody’s going to produce because we kind of went there...’” McNutt said. The performance, which showcases characters using the bathroom on stage and numerous shameless puns (an emboldening anthem for the “free pee” society called “I See a River,” for example), isn’t all just one big coarse joke on sanguine musicals, however. There is meaning behind the indecency. Evoking some of the conservationist philosophy of Thomas Malthus, “Urinetown” also implicitly prods at the way societies waste resources by confounding audience expectations of a fabulous ending. “It’s a really fun way to look at a serious issue,” said junior Elizabeth Nestlerode, a BFA major who plays Soupy Sue, a poor citizen who joins the rebellion. “You don’t really think about the environmental message until the end, where you’re like, ‘Oh wait, that’s actually true.’” SEE URINETOWN, PAGE 8