Urinetown, the satiric Broadway musical which earned 10 Tony Award nominations, will have a production in London, Hank Ungar of the Araca Group told Playbill On-Line. The show will bow in the UK in 2003.
No theatre or casting details were available.
The hit Broadway musical comedy about a futuristic society where water is rationed and the rabble have to pay to use public facilities has already announced a U.S. tour that begins in June 2003 in San Francisco.
The tour will begin June 17, 2003, at the Geary Theatre in San Francisco, the home of American Conservatory Theatre. The yearlong tour is produced by The Araca Group and Dodger Theatricals with TheatreDreams, Lauren Mitchell and the American Conservatory Theatre.
It is thought that the company will be initially working under a regional theatre contract at ACT and then under a touring production contract once it leaves the city by the bay (similar to how the current national tour of Proof began at Seattle Repertory Theatre), though details of the contracts have not been announced. The neo-Brechtian musical comedy by Greg Kotis (book and lyrics) and Mark Hollmann (music and lyrics) will be part of ACT's season. No casting has been announced. The national tour will be directed by John Rando with choreography by John Carrafa, who both helmed the Broadway production. Designers will be Scott Pask (set), Gregory Gale and Jonathan Bixby (costumes) and Brian MacDevitt (lighting), who also designed the Broadway staging, currently running at The Henry Miller on Broadway.
Initial tour stops for Urinetown are Denver, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Cleveland. Other cities will be announced shortly. No specific venues have been announced.
The work began life at the Present Company Theatorium on the Lower East Side as part of the 1999 New York International Fringe Festival. Plucked up by commercial producers, the show got a new cast (Spencer Kayden is a holdover), a new creative team (the writers remained) and narrative refinements. It played a 2001 May-July run Off Broadway — with Tony Award winner John Cullum playing the comic bad guy — and moved to Broadway by September.
The musical satire, considered by many to be the funniest musical this side of The Producers, concerns a futuristic, drought-stricken city where water usage and toilets are controlled by an evil corporation, led by dapper Caldwell B. Cladwell (played by Cullum). The citizens rebel — and dance! — and comedy ensues.
