Given, I did find the listing for the fact that "Evil Dead: The Musical" was coming to off-Broadway through a Google Alert for "Buffy." The somewhat tenuous connection, other than the demonology theme, was that Hinton Battle--who played a dancing demon in the Buffy musical episode--was the choreographer for the show, which began as a Fringe show in Canada, and has been getting pretty consistently good reviews. (Ace, did you ever go?)
Let's face it...I don't have show money these days. So when a friend generously offers me a ticket with no strings, I'm just a girl who can't say no. My friend--a longtime "Evil Dead" fan--had already been to see the show, actually after I told him about it to begin with. He insisted on taking me as his guest to his second time. Halfway through the opening number, in which the cast members, young, attractive and sex-crazy, headed up to a deserted cabin in the woods for no apparent reason, I realized that even though I'd never seen any of the Evil Dead movies, I've certainly seen enough horror movies to understand: this was going to be funny.
We had the foresight to get seats that were outside the "splatter zone"--shades of Gallagher and Blue Man Group as those in the front rows got shpritzed with a light mist of stage blood. The music and lyrics were a hilarious sendup of the horror film genre that anyone exposed to the ridiculous plots, skimpy clothing, excessive gore and violence of Shocktober flicks will be used to, with special references thrown in for the "Evil Dead" faithful. (The Faithful Dead?) By the time we get to the song "All of My Boyfriends Get Killed By Canderian Demons," you're thinking, "girlfriend, have I been there."
Musical styles and theater allusions are also parodied/honored, with a particularly effective tango as well as a Mr. Cellophanesque homage/bemoaning of a "bit player" who isn't taken seriously. There are hot chicks in various stages of random and abs-revealing undress and sexual innuendo. There is the "Stiffler" character, who doesn't care about anything other than getting lucky. But everyone in the cast is top-notch, as comedic actors and as dancers. As for standouts, the diminutive Jenna Coker, as sister Cheryl, who is the first of the cabinpeople to turn demonic, is an unstoppable energy source who should be used to generate power for a small developing nation.
But I have to give a literal hand to Ryan Ward (Ash), who acts his literal digits off in a gut-busting display of comedy surrounding the possession of his arm. His comedic control of his out-of-control appendage literally strongarmed its way into my heart. Literally.
If you visit the show's MySpace page, you can get 50 percent chainsawed off your tickets. And you can become Evil Dead's kajillionth MySpace Friend, and join the mailing list so you'll be informed when the CD comes out. (Which should be sometime next year, seeing as how the cast hasn't gone into the studio yet.)
And so concludes a post which my parents will have no interest in, but which is important because it chronicles my excursion from my self-imposed apartment exile back into the real world, only to find it populated with the living dead.*
*No, this does not mean I've rejoined JDate.
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