Oct 19 2006

Evil Dead: The Musical A REVIEW

Okay... wow. Last night I had the opportunity to see a preview of Evil Dead: The Musical. I'll say that there are two entertainment trends that I am not fond of: movie musicals, and tongue in cheek remakes. Movie musicals are the Broadway equivalent of making a TV show into a movie. After "The Producers" every producer in New York started mining Blockbuster looking for something they could put onstage. Some have been good ("Holy Grail") some have been bad ("Dirty Rotten Scoundrels") and some have only been fair ("The Wedding Singer"), but it just seems to me that there have to be better sources. Speaking of TV shows going to the silver screen why do they all essentially make fun of the show they are emulating? Granted some are worthy of mockery like "The Dukes of Hazard" but I'd have much rather seen a solid romantic comedy based on "Bewitched" than what we got. Evil Dead falls squarely into both of these pet peeves, so how does it fare? Not well frankly.

It's fun, don't get me wrong. And it has moments of brilliance. There are some pure laughs to be had, and some fun numbers, but in the end it was all a little flat. My first complaint is that the show doesn't seem to be sure of what it is mocking exactly. At times it is certainly poking holes in the source material, and at other times it attacks horror movies as a genre, but it also takes some serious shots at musical theatre convention. The audience that came to see this show because of the first part of the title (Evil Dead) is not going to get the musical theatre jokes, and the audience that came for the second part (The Musical) might be alienated by the blood and geek based humor.

Scattered through all that though are some great touches. The zombie masks are fantastic and the transformations are often seamless. The first transformation in fact was so full of theatre magic that I am still not 100% sure how they pulled it off. The rest of the special effects fall into one of two categories: either they are magical and fascinating, or they are played for laughs. One headless zombie is obviously a walking joke, while at the same time there are moments like a scalping that are enthralling. The jokes also seem to go to either extreme, overplayed, or understated. The understated humor frankly works the best. Ryan Ward as Ash plays this show as if he is the only sane person onstage. He only breaks the fourth wall and convention when his character runs up against some aspect of the plot that is obviously far fetched or against logic. On the other hand Darryl Winslow as Jake beats every line he is given with a stick trying to get every ounce of comedy he can out of it. In the end his performance suffers. Winslow doesn't trust the script to carry him the way that Ward does.

The show doesn't disappoint in some aspects it hits all the high points of the movie ("Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.") and it certainly delivers on it's promise of blood and gore. Officially the first three rows are the "splatter zone" where the seats are covered in plastic, and you probably should be too, but unofficially members of my party were hit by spraying blood as far back as the 7th row.

I'd say that if you are a rabid fan of the movie, or you can enjoy an evening of fairly mindless entertainment with some blood thrown in then you should go. If you are in any way looking for off-kilter greatness then you're going to be a bit disappointed.

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