'URINE' FOR A REAL TREAT.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

THE MOST SACRED of musical theater cows get systematically led to the slaughterhouse with every beat of ``Urinetown: The Musical's'' demented little heart. Bang! There goes ``Fiddler on the Roof.'' Boom! see 'ya later, ``Chicago.'' Take that, ``Les Miserables''!

But forget the pastiche of references and the self-mockery. It's immediately clear why producers were wary about getting anywhere near Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann's oddball romance. Who wouldn't hesitate over a story about a boy, a girl, a water shortage, a civic uprising and a city where nobody - but nobody - pees for free?

And who can resist it now? The national touring production, directed by John Rando with musical staging by John Carrafa, may induce a bit of head-scratching among those accustomed to ``South Pacific.'' Still, ``Urinetown'' is deftly staged, end-to-end funny and contains a couple of truly all-star performances. Any musical that borrows so freely from other sources in this manner kind of has to be original.

The ``pay to pee'' bit, by the way, isn't just something thrown in for shock value. It's the whole story, the largest reason why ``Urinetown'' is so wickedly cracked. Questionable taste? Heck, Kotis and Hollmann's baby was born without taste buds.

And don't they just know it. Our educational tour guide for this particular journey is beat cop Officer Lockstock, who explains the rules to street urchin Little Sally with phrases like ``Everything in its time. Nothing can kill a show like too much exposition.'' Jeff McCarthy makes Lockstock into a Joe Friday who desperately wants to be Elvis. Meghan Strange's waifish Little Sally is his deadpan equal.

Basically, we're 20 years into a severe water shortage. Private toilets have been abolished, and a single company - Urine Good Company - owns the commode monopoly and charges every citizen a fee to do their business. Let it go on the street or in the bushes and you're exiled to Urinetown, a place where nobody wants to go and from whence nobody seems to return. Caldwell B. Cladwell (Ron Holgate), the president of Urine Good Company, is as corrupt as a two-headed nickel. With the constabulary and local politicians in his greedy little pocket, Cladwell is planning a trip to Bermuda, where presumably he intends to stay.

His daughter, Hope (Christiane Noll), has returned from the Most Expensive University in the World to join the family business as a fax and copy girl. She has also fallen in love with a public urinal worker, Bobby Strong (Charlie Pollock), whose father, Old Man Strong, was sent to Urinetown. The situation is ripe for insurrection.

McCarthy and Holgate may be playing things tongue-in-cheek, but Noll's Hope Cladwell is the embodiment of earnestness. And her performance is astonishing. Sweet-voiced and perky with a '40s girl-Friday charisma, Noll manages to steal scenes - musical numbers even - in which her character is gagged and bound to a chair.

Theatergoers who may have caught Rando's production of Steve Martin's ``The Underpants'' at the Geffen Playhouse will see a different kind of mayhem here. ``Urinetown's'' humor, for all its broadness, is smarter and more subliminal. Deliberately bad dialogue is always calling attention to itself, often leaving the actors looking a bit bewildered.

Things are not so tightly constrained that characters can't break into, say, a gospel number, a hora or some Fosse-esque steam heat. Major kudos to Carrafa, who keeps the musical numbers high-energy and, weirdly enough, in context. Pollock's Charlie seems to share Lockstock's Elvis fixation, while among the female ensemble Kirsten Wyatt's Little Becky Two Shoes isn't about to let a seriously pregnant belly keep her from some daring dance maneuvers.

Hollmann's score comes through smoothly thanks to an on-stage band led by Jason DeBord. How nice it would be to clearly hear Kotis' lyrics, which get positively swallowed up whenever more than two people are singing. As a venue for musicals, the Wilshire has had problematic acoustics in the past. Please test the sound, folks, preferably before ``Urinetown'' makes its wicked way out of town.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

URINETOWN - Three and one half stars

Where: Wilshire Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays through May 23.

Tickets: $42 to $67. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: Delightfully demented, a musical theater send up that dances to its own oddball beat.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Todd A. Horman, left, Jimi Corti and Frank Holmes are three of the residents in a community where everybody pays to pee in ``Urinetown.''