Track Listing

1. Overture
2. Too Much Exposition
3. Urinetown
4. It's A Privilege To Pee
5. Mr. Cladwell
6. Cop Song
7. Follow Your Heart
8. Look At The Sky
9. Don't Be The Bunny
10. Act One Finale
11. What Is Urinetown?
12. Snuff That Girl
13. Run, Freedom, Run!
14. Why Did I Listen To That Man?
15. Tell Her I Love Her
16. We're Not Sorry
17. We're Not Sorry (reprise)
18. I See A River

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9712 in Music
• Released on: 2001-08-07
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Cast Recording

Amazon.com
"How about a bad title?" wonders Spencer Kayden's Little Sally in "Too Much Exposition." "That could kill a show pretty good." It's a tribute to the skill deployed by the Urinetown creative team (Mark Hollman, music and lyrics; Greg Kotis, book and lyrics) that its title doesn't kill the show. Set in a near-future in which water depletion has led to a ban on private toilets, this may be the only musical in history in which one of the leads makes a fortune on pee. But the show (which originated Off-Broadway before graduating to the big league) limits its subversive intent to subject matter and is refreshingly classic in approach and structure--think Weill-meets-Lewis Carroll. Backed by a small ensemble, the cast (with John Cullum in a turn nothing short of brilliant as the evil urinal magnate) has a field day with Kotis and Hollman's frequently hilarious score. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

Customer Reviews

Urinetown soundtrack
I ordered this CD so my 2 high school kids could practice for their audition for this musical. It had enough dialogue that they could get a good feel for the show, and had all the songs. If you want the songs from this musical, this is the way to get them.

This is the original broadway cast!
Listen to the original Broadway Cast in the recording I didn't know that John Cullum from the TV series Northern Exposure could sing! He was Nominated for Tony award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for the role of Mr. Cladwell in "Urinetown", May 2002.

Ingenious but often smug and ideologically confused
If there was ever a show which one might admire and yet on some level actively dislike, "Urinetown" might be the one. Admittedly, the score is tuneful and catchy, and the melodies are sometimes surprisingly beautiful (when they aren't overly Kurt Weill-esque). The orchestra--sounding like a combo of maybe five--does wonders with the score. "Look At the Sky" and "Run Freedom Run" are stirring, "Don't Be the Bunny" and "Snuff that Girl" are as musically irresistable as they are lyrically biting, and the cast performs with vigor. (Special props to Hunter Foster, who's just sensational.) Yet ultimately the show is so relentlessly snarky and pleased with itself that it begins to paint itself into corners, and then resort to philosophies that are downright bewildering. When things get really black in Act II and Officer Lockstock and Little Sally patronizingly try to answer the rhetorical question "What kind of a musical is this?", one is tempted to yell at the stereo: "Clearly, one written by people who've never seen 'Sweeney Todd' 'Phantom of the Opera' 'Les Miserables' 'Follies' 'Cabaret' 'West Side Story' 'Into the Woods' or even 'Carousel,' which bumped off its hero in Act I!" "Urinetown" thinks it's daring and "edgy"--which is why people who claim to hate musicals often love it--but its plotting is ridiculous, and at the end the bookwriters basically throw up their hands and resort to a sort of chipper nihilism. They then berate the audience and the listener for daring to enjoy themselves, like some sort of grim Soviet-era brainwashing; however, the entire plot of the show revolves around freedom for individuals and rebellion against the powerful--which then results in environmental apocalypse. Do the writers of this show seriously believe that a fascist intersection of government and business that suppresses humanity is the only thing PREVENTING enviromental meltdown? (The show never seriously addresses reducing overpopulation; that would detract from its ability to chastise the audience at the end of the show.) "Urinetown" ultimately is about nothing but its own cleverness, like the brainiest kid in the classroom who's "too cool" to be emotionally engaged or make a difference; its only real goal is to make a listener or audience member go, "Wow! I'm such a bourgeois loser for thinking I can make a difference politically in the world, and liking 'Hairspray!'" If you want real cynicism and pitch-black comedy, go with Kander and Ebb's "Cabaret" or "Chicago"; if you want sucker-punch tragedy, go with Sondheim's "Follies" or "Sweeny Todd."