Theatre review: Yeast Nation (the triumph of life)

There must be something about Southwark Playhouse that inspires Benji Sperring towards the colour green: The director's last show in the Large was The Toxic Avenger, and now from a green lead we move on to an entirely green cast. Urinetown creators Mark Hollman (music & lyrics) and Greg Kotis (book & lyrics) have come up with an even more surreal theme for a musical than public toilets, by going back to the year 3,000,458,000 BCE and the first single-cell yeast organisms that could be considered life on Earth. Yeast Nation (the triumph of life) has recently been selling itself as "London's most controversial musical," which isn't quite accurate as the term has to be "divisive" - many of the official reviews seem to have completely panned it, and based on the turnout even on a Friday night that seems to have affected ticket sales. But, appropriately enough, the yeast-based substance it's most turned out to resemble is Marmite, because among those who made the trip many have loved it.

Re-review: Urinetown

When I first saw Jamie Lloyd's production of off-Broadway musical Urinetown back in March, I thought Soutra Gilmour's too-large-for-the-St James set indicated that a West End transfer was planned; but I also thought it would always be a hard sell there. Both proved true: It's currently playing at the Apollo but has recently shaved a couple of weeks off its run to accommodate the incoming My Night With Reg transfer next year. You can read my original review of Urinetown here; I enjoyed it at the time but probably wouldn't have made a return visit if there hadn't been a very good discount deal at the Last Minute. It turned out to be worth the revisit though, partly thanks to some central recasting. And no, although Nathan Amzi is good as the new Officer Barrel, it's not him I mean.

Theatre review: Urinetown

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I think the press night for Urinetown is sometime next week.

When tickets first went on sale last summer for the latest show at the St James, it was with a slightly awkward attempt at the recent fashion for secret theatre and cinema, that saw people invited to buy tickets for a show whose title wouldn't be announced until a few months later. All that was known was that it would be directed by Jamie Lloyd, but then so are most things. But its codename "UGC" led people with a knowledge of Broadway hits to quickly identify it as a 1999 show that won Tony awards and ran for three years on Broadway, but never made it to the UK until now. Mark Hollmann (music & lyrics) and Greg Kotis (book & lyrics) present a bleak environmental satire about the inevitable drain on resources, but in the form of a spoof musical. And, perhaps explaining why Lloyd's production was keen to shift a few tickets before people got a whiff of the title, it's called Urinetown.