Like No Other

Musicals are fairy tales. Some are jolly, like “Annie.” Some are grim: “Urinetown, The Musical,” for one. Grim, perplexing, riveting. At its heart, “Urinetown,” about a drought-ridden city and the corporate takeover of all toilets, is one long potty joke surrounding a tale of political domination and urban struggle. “Let my people pee” is scrawled on one wall of the grimy and admirably baleful set in this Ghent Playhouse production. But the UGC, the Urine Good Company, is totally in charge, forcing people to stand, squirming, in line waiting to pay for the UGC latrine. This musical, which opened in 2001 at the New York Fringe Festival and then migrated to Broadway for 965 performances and a number of awards, is about theater, too, and how it works. As Officer Lockstock (Mark Schane-Lydon) cautions Little Sally (Eleah Peal) who strives to give the audience some background, “Nothing can kill a show like too much exposition.” The central conceit, the cop/narrator tells us, is about forcing people to pay to pee. Those who break the Public Health Act, who turn to the bushes, say, are hustled off to Urinetown. What makes this show work is a string of clever and vibrant dance and music numbers echoing revival meetings and shows like “West Side Story,” “Les Mis,” “Fiddler on the Roof.” Yes, there’s a romance between Bobby Strong (Michael Meier) — a public toilet attendant who asks the dangerous question here, “What if the law is wrong?” and leads a ragged peoples’ rebellion — and Hope Cladwell (Kaitlin Pearson) whose father heads UGC. This fellow, Caldwell B. Cladwell (Tony Pallone), is ruthlessly devoted to “the regulating mechanism of cash.” We get his operative, too, the powerful and heartless Penelope Pennywise, in charge of the public amenity No. 9 (played with flash and wit by Amy Fiebke). This character’s the sort who makes ideas work in spite of the fact that such ideas are not in her best interest (sound familiar?). It’s all very focused, and when Sally offers new ideas for the play, Officer Lockstock explains, “It’s better to concentrate on one big idea than a lot of little ones. Audiences like it better,” he explains, “and it’s easier to write.” In the end, the true meaning of Urinetown is discovered, our worst fears for the lovers, the environment and for our future as a democratic nation are founded and Little Sally is forced to ask, “What kind of musical is this?” One like you’ve never seen before. “Urinetown, The Musical,” written by Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis, and directed here by Sky Vogel, runs at The Ghent Playhouse in Ghent, NY, through Feb. 5. For tickets, call 518-392-6264.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less