This spring the McNicholas student body may be expecting to see Jesus Christ Superstar, a rock ballad musical about the passion of Jesus Christ, but will be surprised to find out that instead, McNick theater has decided to perform Urinetown in March. This decision was made primarily by Theater Director, Teresa De Zarn.
“We were so limited with our space options this year, so then I thought ‘Well, we needed to start getting creative and open our minds, and maybe we needed to start considering another musical,’” De Zarn explained.
Jesus Christ Superstar was an expensive musical to attempt, and since the price of the current Little Women show exceeded the budget, Jesus Christ Superstar became more difficult to perform. “The set we wanted to use wasn’t able to happen, we tried to find another space and that didn’t work out; we just were so unprepared,” De Zarn said.
De Zarn decided that the switch to another musical was needed and that, “I really wanted to do something that would be more fun…[since] Little Women has a very serious tone to it maybe we needed to do something more fun and more contemporary,” De Zarn said.
After reviewing a list of contemporary musicals, De Zarn chose Urinetown. “…It is so much fun, it has a lot of really great roles, and I really like to spread the wealth a little bit,” De Zarn said.
Urinetown is a musical satire about a dystopian world, where because of a serious drought a small town is plagued with a tax for urinating. Anyone who refuses is sent to the dreaded “Urinetown.” This musical focuses primarily on spoofing subjects such as capitalism, bureaucracies, and large corporations, as well as other popular musicals. “It is a fun musical and I’m excited to do it,” senior Jacob Fries said.
The show promises to be much more comical than Jesus Christ Superstar and also allows for more female roles. “The music is fantastic, it is a very very fun musical, and it also tells story and has a message; it isn’t just fluff,” De Zarn said.
Although some students may be disappointed in the change in musicals, other may be very excited to be doing a more comical musical. “I am confident in our actors’ abilities,” junior Lauren Steinkuhl said.
“Maybe someday [we’ll do Jesus Christ Superstar]. I certainly would like to direct that show, and I would have loved to do it, so we just need to keep our fingers crossed,” De Zarn added.
Urinetown will open on March 2 and run through March 12, 2017, so students who want to be part of the show should keep their eyes open for auditions in the near future.
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