The musical “Urinetown” famously begins with a police officer — a narrator in the form of Officer Lockstock, to be exact. Rightfully, the musical’s Off-Broadway premiere was presented at a police station — 54th Street’s American Theatre of Actors, which shared an entrance with an NYPD outpost, to be precise. “It was summertime. The air conditioning didn’t work. Everybody was taking their shirts off because you had to. It was so hot. The producers were handing out beers to everybody,” orchestrator Bruce Coughlin recalled wistfully. “It was a really fun time.”
And while Coughlin loved the energy of the room and the excitement of making “Urinetown,” he remembers his own contribution a bit less fondly. “Everybody loved the orchestrations,” Coughlin noted. “But night after night, I’d be so embarrassed because whenever the vocals sang really loud — and there are big chorus vocals in this — you basically couldn’t hear the band.”
That iteration’s band included four musicians who, Coughlin estimates, played about six instruments. Coming from what he called the “scrappy world” of Off-Broadway, the orchestrator was accustomed to writing for small bands. But when a Broadway transfer was announced, Coughlin was excited by the prospect of expanding. “I was like, ‘Great, this is going to sound the way I always wanted!’” he said. Though Coughlin hoped for nine players, he was only granted the addition of one musician, for a total of five.
