Production History

PRODUCTION HISTORY

Music and Lyrics by Mark Hollmann
Book and Lyrics by Greg Kotis
Urinetown debuted at the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999.
Off-Broadway run - American Theatre for Actors from May 6, 2001, to June
25, 2001.
Broadway - The Henry Miller Theatre, running 25 previews and 965
performances from September 20, 2001, through January 18, 2004.
A national tour of the show played major U.S. cities in 2003 and 2004 and
starred Tom Hewitt, Christiane Noll and Ron Holgate.

Urinetown started its Broadway previews two weeks before 9/11. Opening
night was supposed to be September 13th. Following the attacks, the show
was dark on the 11th and 12th, but reopened on the 13th along with the rest of
Broadway’s theatres. Rather than the planned opening, however, the show
continued previews and opened a week later on the 20th. On the first night
back, according to Playbill, “The audience was partly made of airline
attendants who had nowhere else to go. A cake, intended to celebrate the
erstwhile opening, was cut open and shared with the theatregoers. ‘It was a
delicate effort, but I thought it took strength to get through it from the
performers' point of view,’ said Greg Kotis, the show's librettist and co-
lyricist. ‘It seemed an expression of courage and resilience, and those are
elements of the theatre world. I guess I felt proud.’” (From Playbill,
September 11, 2011)

Director - John Rando
Choreography - John Carrafa
Original cast included Hunter Foster (replaced by Tom Cavanagh), Jeff
McCarthy, Nancy Opel and Jennifer Laura Thompson. Principal cast changes
included James Barbour as Officer Lockstock, Carolee Carmello and Victoria
Clark as Penelope Pennywise and Charles Shaughnessy as Caldwell B.
Cladwell, as well as Amy Spanger as Hope Cladwell.

The show was nominated for ten Tony awards, including Best Musical. Kotis
and Hollman won for Best Original Score, Kotis won for Best Book of a
Musical, and Rando won for Best Direction of a Musical. It won several other
national awards, including the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New
Broadway Musical.