Last weekend, the Rec was the place to be. This year’s spring show was a clear divergence from past plays, featuring a sharp, occasionally crass satire on climate change and the musical itself. With an extremely strong cast in both the lead roles and the ensemble, the production of Urinetown kept audiences laughing and engaged for the entire two-and-a-half hours.

From the beginning, Urinetown knew it was a tough sell. First off, there was the name. Then, it was not content just being a musical about the human right to pee – it wanted to make fun at the very genre of musical theater as well. Ava Szalay’s “It’s a Privilege to Pee” is the first tip-off, with a song requiring so strong a belt that it can be nothing but Chicago. From there, the musical references pile on and on: Naomi Becker and Ryan Agnew’s comedic duo drew from last year’s Into the Woods; the final act one number “Act One Finale” is clearly Les Miserable; “Snuff that Girl” was an early act two highlight that nodded at West Side Story, and Patrick Gaghan and Anya Rosenbloom’s star-crossed lovers show up in some way in all of these plays, and will continue to appear in Broadway shows eternal.

And yet, Urinetown was more than the sum of its Tony-winning parts. From the purple and pink uniforms of the corporates to the muddy yellow and brown rags of the poor (done by Ameara Smith), Urinetown kept its core story clear with strong visual markers and left room for the cast to have fun. The show really piled on the jokes, and Urinetown’s fidgety, adolescent humor played well with its audience. This was no biting satire, but it was a show that had a lot of fun with its conceit and knew how to play with its genre well. Urinetown was having too much fun to be mean, but it polished its extended pee and poop joke into a show audiences would have been hard pressed not to enjoy.