Review: Urine Good Hands With Sarah Silverman’s ‘The Bedwetter’
Making its regional premiere at Arena Stage, Silverman’s bio-musical is refreshingly irreverent and honest, and features a stellar cast.
By D.R. Lewis
February 19, 2025
This review originally appeared in Washington City Paper.
Reclined in her bed, which she rarely leaves, clinically depressed mother Beth Ann offers, “It’s important to see someone at the start of their career or you don’t get to see how they grow.” Ostensibly, we know she’s referring to Irene Cara and her star-making role in the 1980 film Fame. But we understand she’s really talking about the 10-year-old potty-mouthed, bed-wetting, soon-to-be-famous comedian lying next to her, Sarah Silverman.
And what a joy it is to see this tiny Silverman (Aria Kane), sliding into adolescence in a baseball tee and rainbow suspenders, without our privileged knowledge of the extraordinary career that lies ahead of her. Adapted from her memoir of the same name, Silverman, with co-book writer Joshua Harmon and composers and lyricists David Yazbek and Adam Schlesinger (of Fountains of Wayne fame, who passed in 2020), have created a hilarious new-ish musical that takes the piss out of growing up depressed. Following a 2022 run at New York’s Atlantic Theater Company, this re-worked The Bedwetter is enjoying its regional premiere at Arena Stage through March 16.
In the early 1980s, Sarah and her eighth grade sister Laura (Avery Harris) bounce between the respective homes of their divorced parents Beth Ann (Shoshana Bean) and Donald (Darren Goldstein) when they’re not learning about Christopher Columbus at Bedford, New Hampshire’s McKelvie Middle School. Making friends at this new school is a worry for Sarah, but she easily charms a trio of catty preteens (Emerson Holt Lacayo, Alina Santos, and Elin Joy Seiler) through her infectiously lowbrow humor. She narrowly manages to escape a sleepover with her deepest secret—that she chronically pees while dreaming of people like Miss New Hampshire—still intact. But when her Nana (Liz Larsen) accidentally lets it slip, Sarah and her family members are each forced to confront their own secrets and the mental health challenges they trigger.
In the canon of bio-musicals, which so often prioritize vanity over vulnerability, The Bedwetter is refreshingly irreverent and honest. It helps that Silverman leads first and foremost with her soggy secret, which cuts doubly as both a by-product of her emotional trauma and as the cause of further public humiliation. And while the bed-wetting is fodder for casual conversation at home (her father was also a bed wetter), at school it’s taboo, even if the vulgarities and curse words she infuses seamlessly into conversation are not.
That vulnerability, and the fact that this Sarah is so unmistakably like her grown public persona, inspires an instant trust in the material (despite some factual adjustment, like combining three real-life sisters into one mega-sister). In that regard, the musical is awfully reminiscent of Fun Home, which dramatizes the dynamic between lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel and her closeted gay father. In The Bedwetter, though, Silverman comes to understand her own experience with clinical depression alongside her mother who, following a devastating loss and re-traumatization, spends her days in her bedroom watching television and planning for a time when she just might be able to venture out (which makes for a breathtaking song from Bean, “There For You”). But before you assume The Bedwetter will only pile on to your stress, let me calm your fears: The musical is as funny as the sleeping bag is soaked, complete with a hilarious riff on the Miss America theme song and extensive impressions of celebrity farts including Olivia Newton-John (“very feminine but they fill up a room”) and “the great Sally Field.”
After an exposition-heavy start, The Bedwetter settles into a happy pace that flows easily until just before its finale. It’s evident that Silverman and her co-creators are students of the American musical, blending classic show-tune sound with recognizable odes to soft rock, folk, and Dean Martin-style lounge music. It works well, with one exception: a late song between Sarah and Donald, “When I Was Nine,” is meant to catalyze the final stretch of plot. But after 80 or so minutes of smart and snappy material, this dragging moment of connection between father and daughter is uncharacteristically trickly–er, treacly. Even the creators seem a little self-conscious about it, tacking on an obligatory redirect as if to warn, “don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten what kind of show this is!” But the detour doesn’t really matter all that much; within minutes, the show bounces back with a closing number that you’ll struggle to flush from your memory.
Director Anne Kauffman and choreographer Danny Mefford are, thankfully, down to clown. There’s a Xanax kickline, a ridiculously tiny rolling chair (which only makes the rollicking hypnosis hymn “Follow the Path” all the more so), and a lovely tableau in the play’s final moments that nods to Silverman’s later career without transcending into indulgence. But there is also great care taken to support the dark underbelly of the show. Kauffman has Bean continually getting out of the bed and climbing back into it, emphasizing the push and pull of her depression, and a phone call between Beth Ann and Donald underscores the physical and emotional distance between them as they try to co-parent their children.
The production has a huge asset in its stellar cast. Maybe it’s the smallness of the stage in Arena’s Kreeger Theater, but more likely it’s that in all their exuberant commitment to the material, the 11 performers can’t help but burst out of the space. Bean’s Beth Ann is heartbreakingly relatable and real: “You can’t fix her/ She’s not broken/ She’s just having trouble coping,” she sings of Sarah. She doesn’t lean in to easy stereotypes or take cheap shots at those who live with depression, but still captures the highs as they come and the lows as they take hold. Goldstein’s Donald is both deflective and reflective, depending on the moment, but leaves no doubt that he’d do anything to help his daughter even as he philanders in the dressing room of his deep-discount denim outlet. Larsen’s Nana, for all her boozy backhandedness (especially in the adorable “To Me”), is a vision of that most special brand of grandmotherly love. And as an assortment of ancillary (albeit big) characters—including Dorothy Hamill-haired teacher Mrs. Dembo, ultra-judgy talk show host Phil Donahue, and pee-plagued Miss New Hampshire—the wholly excellent Alysha Umphress, Ashley Blanchet, and Rick Crom move constantly on and off the stage, while still seeming underused.
But the production’s youngest performers are the true breakouts. Kane is magnetic as Sarah, hardly leaving the stage for the show’s 100-minute run and exuding Silverman’s essence with unwavering endurance. Lacayo, Santos, and Seiler are delightfully distinct in their individual characters, but as a trio are a real force, particularly as they hone their performance of Bette Midler’s “The Rose” (the road has been too long, a Regina George proxy scolds the ambivalent others). And as super-sister Laura, Harris successfully captures the childishness of teens who wrongly think they’ve achieved adulthood.
They all look comfortably at home on scenic designer David Korins’ sets, which are evocative of the era in their relative simplicity (think wood paneling, bulky televisions, and hanging tapestries). Costume designer Kaye Voyce is highly complementary of that look with her own contributions, from Donny’s sportcoat-polo combo to Nana’s taupe jacket-skirt ensemble. Lucy Mackinnon’s video elements, which appear as small as television screens and as large as the width of the proscenium, work to both ground the material in time and enhance the more absurd elements, while lighting designer Japhy Weideman gets a chance to shine in the glitzy finale. And under music director Rebekah Bruce’s baton (with arrangements by David Chase and music supervision by Meghann Zervoulis Bate), the band are well-balanced counterparts to the onstage performers.
Despite its style and subject matter, The Bedwetter gives a hard “pass” on cynicism. It knows that its quirk is its currency, that its soul is its strength. And in these especially bleak winter dregs, its sweet-and-salty self-awareness makes it a most worthy diversion. It might be hard, but wake up, dry off, and get yourself over to Arena Stage. You’ll be glad you did.
The Bedwetter—A New Musical, with book by Joshua Harmon and Sarah Silverman, music by Adam Schlesinger, lyrics by Silverman and Schlesinger, and additional music and lyrics by David Yazbek, based on the book The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, directed by Anne Kauffman, runs through March 16 at Arena Stage. arenastage.org. $69–$199.
Emerson Holt Lacayo (Abby), Elin Joy Siler (Amy), Aria Kane (Sarah), and Alina Santos (Ally) in Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter—A New Musical at Arena Stage through March 16, 2025. Credit: T Charles Erickson Photography