Urinetown, the Musical, set to open in Main Theatre next week, is a hilarious send-up of Broadway musicals, with a not-so-hidden environmental message.

Mindy Cooper, spring quarter Granada artist-in-residence, is directing the UC Davis production. "It's a smart and savvy show for a smart and savvy community," said Cooper, who choreographed The Rocky Horror Show at UC Davis in 2005.

Greg Kotis conceived of Urinetown when he ran short on money while on a backpacking trip in Europe. To use a pubic restroom, he needed to pay.

"It was on one particularly cold and rainy afternoon in Paris," he wrote in introducing the play, "when I was trying to determine how badly I needed to go to the bathroom and whether I should splurge and use one of the toilet pods looming in the distance (or wait until just before dinner when I could combine two trips into one), that the notion ... came to me."

His "notion" was that of a world in which an environmental catastrophe has created a severe water shortage, allowing greedy corporate types to monopolize all public toilets, thereby forcing people to "pay for the privilege to pee."

Those who do not comply are carted off to the dreaded "Urinetown."

"I've never been an environmentalist in any productive sense, nor can I claim to be a social activist," Kotis wrote. "But at the same time I (like most Americans, I suspect) have this creeping sense of dread that we're in the process of doing ourselves in, slowly but steadily."

Once back in New York, Kotis and Mark Hollman developed this unlikely idea into a musical satire that became a runaway success at the 1998 New York International Fringe Festival and ultimately made it to Broadway, winning three Tony Awards in 2002: for directing, book and score.

The play pokes fun at itself and many other Broadway shows, including Les Miserables, West Side Story, Annie, Evita, The Wizard of Oz and Fiddler on the Roof, and includes spoofs of dance greats Bob Fosse and Alvin Ailey. The music covers a wide range: swing, romance, jazz, blues, gospel and rap.

Cooper said Urinetown offers "a wonderful, refreshing voice and a contagious sense of humor at the same time that it gets us thinking about truly serious issues." She added that the play's political and environmental topics are more relevant today than when Urinetown debuted.

Her directing credits include Dracula: The Musical and Wrong Mountain, on Broadway; Five Course Love, off-Broadway; Titanic, national tour; and The New Bozena, Heart & Soul, Fair Liberty's Call, Chicago, The Secret Annex, Jesus Christ Superstar and Music in the Night, a Tribute to Jerome Kern, regional and foreign.

As a performer, she has appeared on Broadway in Chicago, Titanic, Beauty and The Beast, Song & Dance, and Tenderloin.

Her collaborators on Urinetown include faculty members Pete Nowlen, musical director; Maggie Morgan, costume design; and Tom Munn, lighting design; plus Theatre and Dance staff member Ned Jacobson, sound design; and master of fine arts candidate Robert Broadfoot, scenic design.

Erie Vitiello is publications manager for the Department of Theatre and Dance.

Showtime and ticket information

A preview performance is scheduled for May 23, with subsequent performances May 24-26 and May 31-June 2, all at 8 p.m. in Main Theatre. Matinees are scheduled at 2 p.m. June 2 and 3, also in Main Theatre. Tickets: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or www.mondaviarts.org.