THE kitchen area used by members of Princeton Summer Theater is located in a basement below the Hamilton Murray Theater on the Princeton campus. It’s an area decorated with paint-splattered wooden kitchen chairs, Costco-sized packages of cereal and hamburger buns, and old furniture.

   It’s the kind of space college students and the newly graduated call home, and it’s here where members of Princeton Summer Theater discuss the upcoming production of Urinetown shortly before the start of a day’s rehearsal.

   Princeton Summer Theater doesn’t stage many musicals — Urinetown is its first since Little Shop of Horrors in 2006. Interesting it is that the group is kicking off its 2009 season with one of the most expensive productions in its history.

   Talk about flying in the face of a bad economy.

   Mark Hollmann’s and Greg Kotis’ musical takes place in the title town, where a decades-long drought has resulted in the banning of private bathrooms and people having to pay to use public toilets. This leads to an illegal act of urination, a battle between an ordinary guy and the huge corporation called Urine Good Company and, of course, a love story.

   ”I love that it’s basically a very heightened version of a musical and it’s making fun of all the musical conceits but in a way that’s very different than other musicals do,” says Sara-Ashley Bischoff, the show’s director. She notes that Mr. Hollmann and Mr. Kotis wrote the show thinking it would never be produced.

   ”They basically did everything they could possibly do and didn’t have any constraints on their imaginations,” Ms. Bischoff says. “It makes fun of all the normal things that musicals do but in a way that’s fresh. It’s sort of the way the theater crowd would do it.”

   Princeton Summer Theater will present a three-week run of Urinetown June 18 through July 5. That’s a switch from the norm in which the season’s last show gets an extra weekend. But by opening with an ambitious musical, the expectation is that word of mouth will spur interest in the troupe’s other shows.

   Those other shows, all plays, are Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, Samuel N. Behrman’s 1938 comedy No Time For Comedy, and The Underpants, Steve Martin’s adaptation of Carl Sternheim’s 1911 play Die Hose.

   In selecting the season, Artistic Director Shawn Fennell says he asked himself how theater is relevant in what is likely the worst economic climate since the Great Depression.

   ”I realized that writers of plays have been dealing with that (question) since the dawn of time,” Mr. Fennell says. “How is it relevant to get into a room and perform for other people?” All of the plays, he says, address that question.

   Urinetown does it through Mr. Hollmann and Mr. Kotis breaking the fourth wall and having the characters acknowledge the fact they are in a musical. The Glass Menagerie, a memory play, uses a similar device, though with much different results.

   No Time For Comedy follows a playwright attempting to write as life-changing events take place around him, in this case the end of the Spanish Civil War. “He writes snappy comedies and is starting to grapple with bigger things,” Mr. Fennell says. “(He wonders) why is he writing comedy when there’s so much tragedy in the world.”

   The Underpants is a farce about a young housewife whose underwear falls below her dress while in public.

   ”It was a scandal when it came out in 1910, but by (today’s) stage standards, it’s very tame,” Mr. Fennell says. “All of the sexual humor is implied and it’s not about anything but underwear.”

   But Mr. Martin didn’t update the plot to create something that would be scandalous to modern audiences. “Rather than do that, he keeps the time and setting and the social mores of the original framework of the play, and only sort of updates the language of the play and adds his own humor,” Mr. Fennell says.

   Princeton Summer Theater, which depends largely on ticket sales for its funding, is banking a lot on Urinetown. It has the potential for wide appeal, despite that strange title. Its music is made for theater enthusiasts, but its irreverence could draw in some younger audience members as well.

   ”What we’re trying to do, especially with this first show, is tap into that 14 to 20-ish range that tends not to come and see theater,” says Douglas Lavanture, Princeton Summer Theater’s publicity director.

   Brian Gurewitz, the show’s musical director, will conduct five musicians (including himself on piano) playing various instruments. The drummer will play other percussion instruments, a trombone player will also play the euphonium, and a sax player will chip in with clarinet, bass clarinet and soprano saxophone duties.

   When asked if he’s afraid someone might pick up the wrong instrument during the show, Mr. Gurewitz says, “I’m afraid of them knocking over instruments.”

   Musically, Mr. Gurewitz says, Urinetown is interesting because it pokes fun at various musical styles, while also creating pieces within those styles. He points to the Act 2 opener, “What Is Urinetown?” as an example.

   ”When you reach the end of the number, you’re like, Wow, they just did a klezmer number in the middle of this musical, which also contains jazz and smooth Broadway numbers, and a love ballad,” Mr. Gurewitz says. “You think they made fun of klezmer a little bit, but at the same time it’s also a good example of klezmer music.”

   Ms. Bischoff, who has developed original choreography for the production, saw Urinetown during its Broadway run, but says she isn’t looking to copy any other staging. What she does want to retain, she says, is the idea of the show as a creative enterprise, rather than one driven by budget. As in past summers, Princeton Summer Theater will present two children’s shows. Those are an adaptation of a Norwegian fairy tale, East of the Sun and West of the Moon that takes place in outer space, and Mike Kenny’s adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin.

   ”He basically took the folk tale as we know it and arranged it in a way that is surprisingly deep,” Mr. Fennell says. “It’s able to explore all the resonances of this folk talk about a woman spinning the straw into gold, and Rumpelstiltskin asking her to pay a terrible price for the help, in a way that is really interesting and original.”

   Children’s shows are geared toward ages 8 and younger. The group also presents workshops for ages 7 to 12. New this year is a young playwrights contest for ages 14 to 18. The contest will culminate with readings or partial stagings of the winning plays during the run of The Underpants.

   It’s a season designed to keep theatergoers coming, while sparking a new generation’s interest.

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  Urinetown is at Hamilton Murray Theater, on the campus of Princeton University, Princeton, June 18-July 5. Performances: Thurs.-Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 2, 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $20, $16, seniors, $12 students ($16, $14, $10, Sat. matinees). 609-258-7062; www.princetonsummertheater.org