Musicals: Seussical and Urinetown

Blackfriars Theatre in Rochester, NY

seussicalMy wife and I continue on our parade of attending musicals. On July 24, we went to Rochester to see Seussical, the Musical at the Blackfriars Theatre.

The program, one of those online-only items that are increasingly common in venues (and also restaurants), notes the massive initial failure of Seussical. “After an initial run in Boston to solidify the evolving script, Seussical premiered on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on November 30, 2000, and received almost universally negative reviews… As a result, Seussical closed after 198 performances, and its estimated financial losses of eleven million dollars make it one of the worst financial flops in Broadway history.”

As a Seuss fan and casual follower of Broadway goings-on, I remember much of this. “And yet, in the most Seuss-like of developments, Seussical, over the past few decades, has developed a long life in frequent productions in schools and theatres throughout the country since the rights became available in 2004… The story of Seussical could easily be one of Seuss’ own titles. His books are replete with characters that refuse to give up on their goals and remain steadfast in the presence of enduring obstacles.”

We really enjoyed this production of high school and college kids. Now, we drove 230 miles because our niece Alexa was in it as part of a trio who would have given The Shangri-Las pop group a run for their money. Ireland Fernandez-Cosgrove starred as The Cat In The Hat, and she was very good, as was the whole ensemble. But I must mention Mason Morrison, who played Jojo. If he chooses to pursue theater or music, he’s likely to be a star by 2037; he turned ten the week after we saw him.

Also, set designer Abigail Manard painted not just the set but about 95% of the Seussian walls. The photo does not do it justice.

Water shortage

In many ways, Urinetown, which my family saw at the Mac-Hadyn Theatre in Chatham, NY in mid-July, is the opposite of Seussical. It’s a comedic musical that “satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics.” It also takes on the musical as a form. In 2002, it won three Tonys, including Best Book Of A Musical (Greg Kotis) and Best Original Musical Score (Mark Hollmann and Kotis), and was nominated seven times.

The story isn’t as far-fetched as it might have been a couple of decades ago. “A twenty-year drought has caused a terrible water shortage, making private toilets unthinkable. All restroom activities are done in public toilets controlled by a megacorporation called ‘Urine Good Company’ (or UGC). To control water consumption, people have to pay to use the amenities.”

On one hand, it is quite funny, occasionally corny. This review is dead-on. “Audiences will relish the return of favorite Gabe Belyeu in a vocal role as Officer Lockstock, the narrator of the piece and Keeper of the Pee-ce in ‘Urinetown, the musical…not Urinetown, the place’, as he repeatedly takes pains to distinguish between the two.” The rest of the cast of young adults is excellent as well.

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We heard a truly intentionally awful version of the initial fanfare from Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra.

I heard one of my young nieces would be starring in a David Mamet play, and that it was clean! You mean, the guy who wrote Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, and Sexual Perversity in Chicago, all of which I’ve seen in some form, had written a divinely silly, family-friendly, retro-sci-fi romp called “The Revenge of the Space Pandas or Binky Rudich and the Two-Speed Clock”?

Yup, back in 1978. The Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, about 45 minutes south of Albany, is presenting eight performances of the play: “Binky Rudich, his friend Viv, and his almost human sheep Bob tinker with a two-speed clock…” They end up in “Crestview, Fourth World in the Goolagong System, ruled by George Topax and guarded by the Great Space Pandas.”

The theater is small with about 100 seats. My family drove down on Sunday, though I was severely jet-lagged. The last folks seated were a couple with four kids, in my row. I got up so they could sit down and the woman did, but the guy went into the previous row and lifted the kids over the chairs and then climbed over himself.

I liked The Revenge of the Space Pandas and its various actors quite a lot. The story was silly and absurd and quite possibly newly relevant. There was a point during a transitional scene where we heard a truly intentionally awful version of the initial fanfare from Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra. Some boy in the audience asked, “Why is this funny?”, which generated its own laughter.

Here’s Steve Barnes’ review in the Albany Times Union. He rightly praises Wil Anderson as Binky, who “has the right cool-geek persona.” Also, “David Smilow is amusingly mercurial as the feckless ruler of the space-panda planet, whose punishment of choice is dropping an enormous pumpkin onto the heads of the doomed… Special kudos to Natalie Parker for her deadpan turn as the ukulele-strumming court jester. (Parker also wrote the jester’s songs.)”

Oh, that couple with the kids? She was Mary Stuart Masterson, star of Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and Benny & Joon (1993) and a bunch of other stuff. She looked familiar, but I didn’t place her at the time. Her husband Jeremy Davidson is also an actor. They stayed afterward to praise the cast.

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