Reviews of shows from the New York International Fringe Festival will appear on ArtsBeat from now to the festival’s close on Aug. 28. For more information, go to fringenyc.org.
Put the weird sisters from “Macbeth” into a giant pot, add a smidgen of the blind prophet Tiresias from Greek myth and mix in spare parts from sketch comedy and a Broadway belter, and you have the majestically silly performance of Harriet Harris in “Yeast Nation (the triumph of life),“ the new musical by the creators of “Urinetown” that, thematically, is something of a prequel.
Since it’s about the community of life forms that first emerged out of the primordial soup, you might call this crowd pleaser the ultimate prequel. Ms. Harris is playing Jan the Unnamed, the narrator and leader of a kind of Greek chorus of salt-eating yeasts. (Ms. Harris won a Tony Award in 2002 for her performance in “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” which opened on Broadway the same season that offered the unlikely commercial transfer of “Urinetown.”)
When not interrupted by a smarty-pants kid poking holes in her story, Jan the Unnamed guides the audience through the tangled thickets of plot filled with power plays and romantic triangles pushed along by single-cell Machiavels. Her language is littered with quotes from “Macbeth” and Greek tragedy.
Critics and producers have been searching for the next “Urinetown” at the New York International Fringe Festival for so long that it seems like some kind of mythical beast, a theatrical Bigfoot. But the reason this musical may get closer than any other Fringe production has since the 1999 “Urinetown” is how it sustains its satirical style. The jokes veer from broad to brainy, and Mark Hollmann’s music is rock pastiche, but this is the rare satire that knows precisely what it’s sending up and commits to it.
Those copying “Urinetown” usually focus on the silly name and meta-jokes, but what made it work was the affection and irreverence displayed toward a certain twisted version of Social Realism agitprop. In this new work Greg Kotis, who wrote the book (he and Mr. Hollmann wrote the lyrics), takes aim at classical sources with the gusto of a graduate student pulling an all-nighter. It would be easy to stray off topic to get an easy laugh, but this show admirably resists.
“Urinetown,” you might recall, was about an environmental crisis that ended with a salute to Malthus, the early-19th-century economist who theorized that the world population could grow to unsustainable levels. It was a cautionary tale about waste and overconsumption. Exploring the origin of the same theme, “Yeast Nation” focuses on the moments after life emerged out of rock and sea.
The humble yeast society remained on the ocean floor, not reproducing and standing still. Jan the Wise (played with delightful oily charm by Manu Narayan) celebrates the virtue of staying put and following the “strictures” in the very funny tune “Stasis Is the Membrane.” His rival, Jan the Second (Erik Altemus, whose deadpan earnestness is pitch-perfect), argues for change and freedom, to expand the ranks. Evoking “Jesus Christ Superstar,” he sings, “It’s a buzz to have a mission.”
The temptation to branch out leads some yeasts to rise to the top of the ocean to feed, and before long a new life form arrives. The New One (Kimiko Glenn) talks like Frankenstein’s monster and looks like a gymnast from Cirque du Soleil gone berserk. Her entrance is a coup de théâtre. At first she represents a new hope, and then the chaos and overconsumption that eventually lead to the apocalyptic landscape of “Urinetown.”
The high marks of “Yeast Nation” — at La MaMa, where it has sold out its four remaining performances — arrive at the start of the second act with two charming duets, by the power-hungry plotters (Mr. Narayan and Joy Suprano, who plays Jan the Sly) and the bickering lovers (Mr. Altemus and Emily Tarpey as Jan the Sweet). Staged by Mr. Kotis, the mountain of plot eventually drags down the show toward the end, and some numbers, like “Life Goes On,” seem choreographed on the fly. Were it to transfer, it could use some sharper jokes at the start and a more focused plot. Yet generally speaking the production is far more polished than most at the Fringe.
As new life forms rampage over the old, a pointed allegorical subtext emerges that speaks to the state of the festival itself. The scrappy early yeasts were as pure as those early days of the Fringe are reputed to have been by some critics. And the temptation to rise above the ocean floor and expand could be read as a metaphor for how the commercial success of “Urinetown” forever changed the expectations of the festival, now in its 15th year.
But Mr. Kotis has a skeptic’s perspective toward idealized notions about salad days. Curiosity is human. And ambition is essential to growth, but it has a price. This is another musical about the circle of life, although, as opposed to “The Lion King” this one is darkly ironic and morally complex. Evolution, it seems to suggest, can be ugly and bleakly violent, and while its benefits make it worth the pain, they do just barely.
“Yeast Nation (the triumph of life)” continues through Aug. 28 at the Ellen Stewart Theater at LaMaMa, 66 East Fourth Street, East Village; (866) 468-7619, ticketweb.com.