ANN ARBOR, Mich.–Back in the early 2000s when Urinetown grew out of the New York Fringe Festival and went to Broadway, it was hard to believe that a song about the “Privilege to Pee,” would be successful with New York City’s bridge and tunnel crowd. But here we two decades later and Urinetown remains one of the more popular shows and scores in regional, community and school theater.

Playing through this weekend at the Lydia Mendolssohn Theatre, produced by The Ann Arbor Civic Theater, Urinetown seems oddly timely, though the premise of the show–that in some scary near-future, decades of drought have led to catastrophic water shortages, and private toilets have been outlawed–seems surreal or outlandish. It seems an evil corporation, U.G.C., or Urine Good Company, has taken over the pee industry, and it manages the water supply by charging people for urinating at public “amenities.”

The king of the pay toilets is pee mogul, Caldwell C. Cladwell (Jeff Steinhaur) who seems creepily modeled after Donald Trump, who was just a ridiculous very public real estate baron in Manhattan at the time the play was conceived and produced, long before he implausibly found his way to the White House.

The story is about an uprising about paying to pee, led by a handsome, heroic Bobby Strong (John Tramp) who decides to let everyone into the public amenity (bathroom) without charging them. Revolution is afoot. Little Sally (Lily Gechter)) sees hope and happiness ahead. But Officer Lockstock (Chris Grimm) discourages that kind of sunny thinking with a recurring idea in this show: “Dreams only come true in happy musicals, Little Sally.” Sally has a lot of self-aware lines about being in a big show: “When a little girl’s been given as many lines as I have, there’s still hope for dreams!”

Indeed, one of the endearing features of Urinetown is the many homages to popular Broadway musicals. The Act 1 finale is unmistakably lifted from Les Mis, a raucous anthem-like song and over-the-top scene including slow-motion fighting that results in the mogul’s daughter Hope Cladwell ( Zoe Van Slooten0 being kidnapped. The secondary plot of the story is that she and Bobby Strong love one another. Imagine Ivanka Trump falling for an MSNBC newscaster or scrappy Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

One of the songs that stands out thanks to Trisha Fountain’s funny presence and marvelous vocals playing one-time Cladwell paramour Miss Pennywise is “A Privilege to Pee.” She runs Amenity No. 9, with a coin changer and a toilet plunger in her tool belt. Pennywise sings, with lusty authority, “If you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go through me.” And it reminds many Broadway fans of the prison matron’s song from Chicago.  Another nod to a classic. Act Two numbers parody and pay homage to “Fiddler on the Roof,” and “West Side Story.”

The best bits of Urinetown is that it is just fun and silly, but with very funny song lyrics and ridiculous but amusing story arc. Cladwell’s silly song, “Don’t Be The Bunny,” a warning that he who is not on top is by definition on the bottom, is wonderfully delivered by Steinhauer, and feels like the whole idea was inspired by a series of Tweets by you know who. Scenes in which Cladwell is seen plainly paying off politicians to protect his monopoly seems lifted from the daily paper. It’s all over the top, almost like a graphic novel about a dire future in which the seas are rising and turning inland states into beachfront property, and yes, people have to pay to pee or risk jail time.

Just how far from reality are we here? In fact, satire is only effective if we recognize the underlying idea as true or possibly true in the future. The writers have done a splendid job of making it seem weirdly plausible, not to mention au currant twenty years after they stopped typing.

Given the way the government is behaving toward crises like climate change, gun violence, environmental protection steamrolled for corporate profits….does a future in which there is a pee mogul seem all that far off?

Music direction of the fun and funny score by Naki Sung Kripfgans is top drawer. Overall direction by Rob Roy is tight and delivers incredibly well on the Mark Hollman and Geg Kotis idea and story. The set, done by Roy is fun and useful, though a decision to leave the side curtains off of the stage created a slightly odd situation of seeing stagehands and grips is repose and and actors getting ready for entrances. Intentional? Maybe. Thom Johnson’s lighting and Sam Major sound design also worked well to deliver on changes of the times of day and sounds of the city.

Urinetown plays through Sunday September 15th. Get ticket info here.