Before audiences walked into the McLeod Theater, they were given a golden coin and told to use it wisely. Those who know what “Urinetown: The Musical” is about, know what the gimmick was trying to portray, but there were many who had no clue what they were about to walk into. 

The original run of “Urinetown” on Broadway lasted 925 performances and closed out in January 2024. A show with a premise so seemingly ridiculous that the writers at some point contemplated if it should ever be performed for an audience went from an Off-Broadway hit to a Tony Award-winning success.  

Finally, “Urinetown” has graced SIU’s stage once more to close out the theater school’s Spring 2025 season. 

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“Urinetown: The Musical,” a satirical comedy written by Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann, speaks on the strife of a town suffering a water shortage so bad, the town inhabitants must pay to pee. There are no private toilets and cops are always on the lookout for those who choose to relieve themselves in public. Any who engage in the act of public urination or defecation will be subject to immediate arrest and promptly sent to Urinetown, a mysterious place that is not to be revealed until Act 2 of the musical. 

“Urinetown” tackles several themes under its potty humor including capitalism, revolution, political buyouts and corporate greed are among the few. Despite “Urinetown” now being 24 years old, its message is still not dated, even if it does seem to be making light of its situation on the surface. 

The idea stemmed from a poorly planned out trip to Europe that Kotis took, where the bathrooms were pay to use, which resulted in him having to spread his money further until he made it back to the states. Kotis believed the idea could end his career before it really truly began, but regardless he and Hollman persisted. 

Believing that the musical was unproducible and un-pitchable, they let their imagination take them on a ride. This allowed them to break the mold of what a conventional musical would require. 

“Freak-show of a musical” Kotis called “Urinetown” in the introduction of the book, one that Kotis contemplated should not be performed. Despite the burning disdain I hold for potty humor, I think it holds its own. 

The opening number was electric and the harmony stayed in my head for days after and only improved when I saw an actual run of the show with an audience. The amazing chemistry at the start of the show left a great warmth in my chest that lingered until the end. The presence of the audience really brought the actors’ performances to life and elevated an already great show. 

Bobby Strong is played by BFA musical theater sophomore Seth Worthington. He has had a rich performance history so far at SIU, and his growth and vocal performance continues to astound. Vocally, he was the strongest of the cast. I would much prefer to listen to his version of this musical’s songs versus the studio version. Given Worthington’s only in his second year and still continues to improve from the great standing he already had his freshman year, he is a triple threat to keep an eye out for in the future. He does a great job embodying the heroic main lead in the satirical manner in which it was meant to be played. 

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“It’s very easy to just see Bobby as like every leading guy that’s in a show. You see so many characters that could be like him… And I think that’s what made him so hard to play, because going into it, I was like, oh, there’s not that much depth to a character like Bobby Strong… What has made it so hard is the satire that’s in the show, the comedy that’s in the show, I’m playing it funny but being serious about yourself. You know, the more serious you take yourself the funnier, it ends up being,” Worthington said. 

Richard Zimmerman is a community member and alum of SIU’s cinematography department. He currently works as a restorative artist. He was present during SIUs first run of “Urinetown” in 2007. Zimmerman said the show stuck with him since. He was waiting for the chance to come back to SIU and when the opportunity presented itself he jumped. Thank god he did. 

Zimmerman plays the antagonist of our story, Caldwell B. Cladwell. He is a joy to watch and he really brings a booming life to the character. His comedic timing and superb character acting sings in this role. The respect Zimmerman has for the character’s complexity and the writer’s intentions are clear in the choices he makes as Caldwell. 

“What a scary thing to play Caldwell B. Cladwell, who is known as the villain of the show. But it’s just because he’s lived long enough to become the villain. We all in our younger years, have ideals and dreams that we follow. But if we live long enough, those dreams may turn into villainy. I could have been Bobby Strong in my younger years, the hero, but uh, you know, life happens,” Zimmerman said. 

Bailey Warner played the naive, but forever hopeful, Hope Cladwell. Warner displayed good comedic timing and chemistry during her performance. Warner and Worthingtons vocally played well off each other. This was especially evident during their duet “Follow Your Heart.” I much prefer their version to the studio recording. 

Officer Lockstock and Little Sally were played by Blake Zappa and Daily Egyptian staff photographer Alexis Lessman respectively. They served as the narrators and expository devices for the audience in the overall story of the musical. Zappa is a transfer student in his senior year at SIU and a BA theater student. Lessman is a senior BFA in musical theater and this is her first mainstage role but not her first time in an SIU theater production. The two played well off one another and were very entertaining in their fourth-wall breaks during the show. 

Another comedic standout was Sam Deiter, a biological science senior with a minor in music. Dieter played Officer Barrel. Deiter in conjunction with Zappa got some of the best and most memorable laughs. A great cast for the cop duo of Lockstock and Barrel.

Mark Hollmann came to visit the cast to speak with them during the time of their rehearsals. It was a touching experience for all of them. Hollmann is an Illinois native. 

“(Hollman) grew up in Fairview Heights, which was maybe half an hour from where I grew up and so it was so hopeful that someone would be putting together and be able to write something like this and so close to home. So it gave me confidence. It doesn’t matter where you’re from… inspiration can strike and if you work hard and follow your heart you just might find yourself on that stage,” Zimmerman said. 

Worthington felt that Hollmann’s visiting chat with the cast made him work that much harder. Before he was just a name on his script. After, he became more. 

“There’s so many people around the country specifically doing this show and it made me want to work much harder after meeting him because if I made something like that, I would want the people who use what I made to try as hard as they can at it,” Worthington said. 

Matthew C. Williams is an assistant professor of performance and movement at SIU and served as the production’s director and choreographer. Williams has good reason to be proud of his students, their growth and the stellar show they were able to put on. 

“My takeaway of this process is how incredibly mature, insightful, artistic and creative these students are and have developed into over the course of this process, and over the course of this year. A lot of them are seniors or juniors. So I can see, like the collective sort of experience of their training really culminating in this show. And they’re using it all, and they’re just an incredible group of young people that give me hope for the future in this silly musical about saying there’s no hope for the future,” Williams said. 

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