Urinetown! This is Urinetown!

Just when I go and start getting all proud over Joseph, Bucknell goes and does this.

If someone at Bucknell has a fetish for absurdest theater (as I suspect they do), they certainly seem to be indulging it. Earlier this year, the Department of Theater and Dance put on a wonderful production of what may just be the strangest, most metaphorical play ever: The Firebugs. Written by Max Frisch in 1959 as a radio play, it was then adapted to the odd stage version that it is. The play takes place in a small city, panicked because of the recent wave of arsons, all committed by what the town has dubbed "firebugs". The plot centers around two loveable degenerates (both firebugs) named Schmitz and Eisenring who manage to infiltrate the estate of a wealthy buisnessman, Mr. Biedermann. The two (in a metaphor for the Nazi movement in Germany) proceed to prepare the house for demolition, not hiding what they are doing, but announcing it to the household. However, Beidermann and his manipulative wife Babbett refuse to believe the two, and so end up actually giving them the matches they use to burn down the house. Seem conventional enough? You haven't heard the half of it. Says Wikipedia, "The action is observed by a Greek-style chorus of 'firemen', and the increasingly surreal flavour culminates in a final scene when Biedermann and his wife Babette find themselves at the gates of hell. Here they once again meet Schmitz and Eisenring who turn out to be Beezlebum and the Devil respectively." (Just so you know, a friend of ours was terrific in the role of Eisenring/Satan.)

And now, for its annual musical, the University decided to put on an even stranger play (with an even worse title) called Urinetown. (From Wikipedia: "Urinetown the Musical is an award-winning satirical comedy musical, poking fun at local government, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and petty-minded, smalltown politics. Urinetown rejects musical theater convention. There are parodies of all-time successful Broadway shows including Les Miserables. In addition, the production satirizes its own significance. Last but not least, in reverse pantomime style, the unconventional plotline shatters audience expectations of a pleasant ending.") It is very, very strange. Very, very, very strange. But Bucknell did a great job, walking with ease through the eighteen-part harmonies (when everyone on stage was literally singing a different note) the complicated, dazzling tap-dancing ("What can we do to stop them, they have an army of tap-dancing cops!" screams an actor.), and the difficult and risky task of artfully staging such a self-satirical play without making it seem ridiculous.

Kinda makes Joseph look like a walk in the park...