Urinetown the Musical

Why Hello There! And Welcome to Urinetown… the Musical… The opening production of The Grange Theatre's 25-26 Season; a Season of Momentum; inspired stories for and from the community. At first glance, Urinetown is a satirical tale about paying to pee, but beneath its absurd humor lies a sharp critique of corporate greed, authoritarianism, and environmental collapse. The story was written over a quarter century ago but it feels like it could be taken directly from today’s headlines.
Summer 2025, Vermont is enduring one of the most intense droughts in its recorded history. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the entire state is currently classified under moderate to severe drought conditions. Many areas are experiencing both long-term and “flash” drought extremes, with streamflow and groundwater at historic lows. Some wells and river gauges are measuring their lowest water levels in over a century. Lake Champlain has receded by 20–30 feet in places, levels not seen since the 1930s. Many rivers have dropped so low that you can find long buried debris, revealing our shared hidden histories along the mud and rock.
In Urinetown, the water crisis feels absurd, until you remember that today in Vermont, scarcity is no longer satire, but reality. Urinetown is no longer some abstract parable about environmental peril, it is becoming the world’s shared lived experience.
Alongside climate disaster, this production also examines wealth inequality, corporate power and the ideals of worker’s rights, themes that echo Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis. Lang’s towering vision of a city divided between elites in gleaming skyscrapers and workers laboring underground feels eerily alive in our world of billionaires, unchecked corporations, and struggling communities. In Urinetown, the wealthy hoard access to water while the poor fight for survival, an echo of Metropolis’s exploited underclass and a reminder of how fragile justice becomes when profit overrides our humanity.
We will also lean into Urinetown’s authoritarian undercurrents: its militarized police, its rigid rules, and its demand for compliance. As we explored how to bring these things to life, I was reminded of George Orwell’s 1984, a world defined by surveillance, propaganda, and the suppression of dissent. Today, echoes of Orwell reverberate in our own politics, where institutions are bent toward consolidating power, freedoms are challenged, and communities grapple with fear and division. Our world and Orwell’s dystopian story feel closer and closer as we march into our collective futures.
So why are we all here? Sitting in a dark theatre in rural Vermont watching a musical about pee? To me, as a performer and artist, theatre at its most fundamental form is community art. Community in its creation and community in its consumption, and because our collective joy and laughter can sharpen our sight. Urinetown uses humor, parody, and spectacle to hold a mirror up to our world, asking us to recognize the systems that exploit us, and daring us to imagine something better. It is absurd, it is biting, and it is necessary.
And yet, this is not a note of despair. Vermonters know resilience. Humans know Hope. We know what it means to haul water for neighbors, to fight for fair wages, demand individual liberties, to stand up for the land, our Earth and the freedoms we hold dear. Theatre, like community, thrives on collective effort. Together, we can confront the forces of greed and fear, and shape a future rooted in justice, sustainability, and compassion.