Sunday Showtunes

Monty Python used to say, “And now for something completely different.”  Well, you can hardly get more different than the off-Broadway “Evil Dead: The Musical,” playing at the New World Stages (home of “Altar Boyz” and “Naked Boys Singing” – both shows with “Boys” in the titles.  How much do you think they were tempted to call this “Evil Dead Boys”?)  An ad line states:  “Dismemberment.  Mutilations.  Musical Numbers.”

Subtitled, “Disarmingly funny” (punny because the main character famously loses his hand),  this is a campy cult-type musical based on the 2 (3, sort of) “Evil Dead” cult films.  It recalls shows such as “Reefer Madness” and “Zombies from the Beyond” but more than anything else, “The Rocky Horror Show.”  The plot is about a group of teens terrorized by demons in an abandoned cabin in the woods when they discover a “book of the dead” called the Necronomicon.  The music is mostly rock – it’s not the cleverest or best-written score ever, but it gets the job done pleasantly enough and I will happily buy the cast album when it comes out. Song titles include “It Won’t Let Us Leave,” “Look Who’s Evil Now,” “Bit Part Demon,” “What the F**k?”, “You Blew That Bitch Away,” and “Ode to An Accidental Stabbing.”  There is one showstopper, called “Do the Necronomicon,” featuring choreography that is all over the map – freely lifted from “Thriller,” “Rocky Horror,” period dances of the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, New Kids on the Block, and Wham.  [If you’ve seen the show and I  left anything out, do let me know won’t you?]  The acting style and line delivery are pure camp – the characters seem to assume the audience already knows everything that is happening (many times they did – it was obvious there were some fans of the film in the audience and often they completed the famous lines from the movie.)

Like “Mary Poppins” and “Tarzan,” the show’s gimmick is the sets and spectacular special effects.  The movie features tons of scary makeup and blood effects (including decapitations, dismemberments, chainsaws, and all the accompanying blood and gore) and the play prides itself on presenting all of those live on stage.  The characters become possessed and then un-possessed, and the lightning-fast changes from normal faces to demon faces is ingeniously done with a serious of hidden thin contoured makeup masks (no time to paint on demon makeup!) that are surreptitiously applied and removed during scenes.  The trick cabin set is ingenious and nearly every part of it moves as if by demons and gets destroyed and/or bloodied during the show.  As the dismembered hand is taken off, then placed in various parts of the set, then appearing on people’s backs, and decapitated heads come to life on countertops and the like, there is much clever use of misdirection, multiple props, and people hidden behind and in the set working the effects. 

As people are stabbed, chainsawed, disemboweled, dismembered, and shot, blood  is liberally spurted and sprayed everywhere including into the first rows of the audience (the first 3 rows, with seats covered in plastic, are called the “splatter zone” and they give you plastic tarps to wear.  I was in the FOURTH row, just behind the splatter zone, but to the right of center – fortunately the heaviest soppings were center.  Otherwise I would have wound up looking like I did the last time I got soaked with blood at a show – at an Alice Cooper concert).  With all the gore onstage and off, I would hate to clean up the intricately detailed set and audience seats after each performance!  Not to mention that the actors themselves get covered in blood (costuming this show is a nightmare in itself).  During the scene where Ash chainsaws Cheryl’s head (while singing), the blood is literally shot into his open mouth like a water fountain while he is singing (used vocally to comic effect).  During a climactic battle, hidden holes in the set shoot streams of blood as if from a garden hose clear out into the audience.  With all these rivers of blood, the blood budget alone on the show must make up most of its expense.

The show was entertaining, quite awesome and very cool.  In it’s own way (ie special horror effects), it was every bit as impressive as “Mary Poppins,” “Tarzan,” and “Drowsy Chaperone” were with THEIR gimmick sets.  It seems to have already built up some cult following, as many in the audience clearly were fans of the film and possible some of them had even seen the show before.  It began last Halloween for an open-ended run and clearly they are hoping to build a cult following and stay open as long as people come. Currently tickets are being sold through March.

One last note – one of the characters counts off the bow encore but instead of “five, six – five six seven eight,” he said “five, six – five six six six” which I thought was awfully cute.

KSHO broadcasts to the Mid-Willamette Valley in Western Oregon.
Among the communities served are Albany, Corvallis, and Lebanon.