Samantha Paladini, Lindsay Palmer, Caitlin Callahan, Zach Troutman (Photo by Gloria Ramirez Plunkett)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Kentwood Players at the Westchester Playhouse
Thru June 7
RECOMMENDED
In their promotional materials, the Kentwood Players describe themselves as “L.A.’s most professional amateur theater group.”
After watching the group’s current production of Urinetown at the Westchester Playhouse, you might take exception to that description. There is absolutely nothing amateurish about this show, which is of a highly professional caliber across the board.
In existence for over 75 years, the Kentwood Players are categorized as a community theater, also a bit of a misnomer. Too frequently, community theaters are populated by aging wannabe actors who may have immortal longings in them — but simply can’t deliver the goods across the footlights.
The Players may be a community theater, but only in the sense that it is a volunteer-based entity that relies on community participation for every aspect of production, from behind the scenes to on stage. In the group’s current offering, that sense of community was palpable in the packed opening night crowd.
First produced in the early 2000s, Urinetown — music by Mark Hollman and lyrics by Hollman and Greg Kotis, who wrote the book—was forced to postpone its original Broadway opening,which had been scheduled to open just two days after 9/11. Despite that unfortunate timing and the financial challenges that followed, the production overcame those drawbacks, winning multiple awards, including three Tonys.
The musical is based on the somewhat vulgar premise that, in a world of dwindling resources and scant water supply, the poor are forced to pay for the use of public amenities, with the desperate hordes holding their water outside squalid port-a-potties. Those who cannot pay the toll are forced to relieve themselves on the street, at which point they are arrested and whisked off to the dreaded “Urinetown,” that mysterious bourn from which no tinkler returns.
Mercenary, murderous plutocrat Caldwell B. Cladwell (Richard Osburn), who heads the monolithic company, Urine Good Company, has kept the impoverished citizenry in rigid restraint ever since the “Stink Times,” when water scarcity prompted a complete breakdown of the social order. Cladwell’s daughter, Hope (Allegra Greenawalt), a starry-eyed recent graduate of the “most expensive college in the world,” adores her father and has no idea of the extent of his corruption. When Hope meets Bobby Strong (Zach Troutman), a lowly port-a-potty attendant, romantic sparks fly. But when Bobby becomes the head of a people’s “free pee for all” rebellion, he takes Hope hostage to act as a bargaining chip with her father, flushing their fledgling romance into the toilet.
In a crisply effective staging, directors Jeremy Palmer and Alison Bodle go boldly over-the-top, with plenty of lavish mugging and double-takes. Nick Unquera is a crowd-pleaser as Officer Lockstock, both villain and narrator, who steps outside the story to provide droll commentary on the populace’s increasingly violent uprising — amusing meta-musings that subvert the typical musical format.
Latter Day Dudley Do-right and Polly Pureheart types, Troutman and Greenaway lend farcical panache to their impossibly innocent stereotypes. Greenaway in particular has a standout voice, and as her character transforms from ingenue to insurgent, she lets out all the stops.
However, this production largely hinges on the truly exceptional ensemble, which, under the astute musical direction of Stephen Amundson, sounds like a cathedral choir. Their choral numbers soar, further elevating this raucous satire.
Kentwood Players at the Westchester Playhouse, 8301 Hindry Ave., L.A. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sat.-Sun., 2 pm; thru June 7; dark Memorial Day weekend. boxoffice@kentwoodplayers.org Running time: two hours and 15 minutes with an intermission.
