Evil Dead musical not for faint of heart Play will appeal to an audience that loves over-the-top horror movies By: Randall King Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Oct. 26, 2018

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This article was published 26/10/2018 (2289 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It must be said Ryan Ash, the actor/standup who plays the lead in Evil Dead: The Musical, has some serious wrestling moves. The guy can flip himself onto the stage of the Park Theatre with such crashing force, you can feel it in your teeth.

That’s something to keep in mind if you’re deciding on coming to Evil Dead: The Musical, an all-singing, all-dancing, all-chainsawing adaptation of director Sam Raimi’s horror trilogy — mostly Evil Dead II (1987).

The play follows a quintet of fun-loving young people on a trip to a remote cabin in the woods. Ash (Ash) comes with his girlfriend Linda (Elena Howard-Scott) and his needy sister Cheryl (Katie German). Also along for the ride is the sexist jerk Scott (Sam Kowaluk) and his oblivious girlfriend Shelly (Teela Tomassetti). In short order, they all discover a tape recorder in the which the previous cabin tenant, a college professor, accidentally invokes Kandarian demons when he translates the “Book of the Dead,” the Necronomicon. Soon all hell literally breaks loose as, one by one, the unhappy campers are possessed by said demons.

The only thing that might save them is the second-act intervention by the professor’s daughter Annie (Robyn Slade), who arrives at the worst possible moment alongside her too-obliging boyfriend Ed (David Fox, who also choreographs) and vaguely menacing local yokel Jake (Dan De Jaeger, who co-directed with Quinn Greene).

A product of Winnipeg theatremakers Wasteland Productions (responsible for a previous production of the show in 2014 and The Rocky Horror Show in 2015), Evil Dead is a bid to bypass Winnipeg’s base of serious theatregoers to capture the kind of audience that appreciates gonzo wrestling moves, over-the-top horror movies and — most important of all — a frequent dousing in geysers of fake blood (limited to the front rows of the theatre dubbed the “splash zone”).

Some Evil Dead fans at the Wednesday night opening performance welcomed the gory prospect with the zealous gusto of born-again Christians at a baptism rally.

Yes, you pay extra for those seats. This ain’t Rainbow Stage, people.

Watching it, it’s not surprising the musical started life in a Toronto bar back in 2003.

With book and lyrics by George Reinblatt and music by Reinblatt, Frank Cipolla, Christopher Bond and Melissa Morris, it’s a raucous, booze-infused entertainment very much pitched to fans of Raimi’s three films, which are quoted liberally. (”Groovy!” “Who’s laughing now?” “This is my boom-stick!”)

In some ways, the musical is very much in the spirit of the movies in that it accompishes a lot with minimal resources through sheer nerdy invention. Note the mounted moose head with glowing orange eyes.

That said, the show’s production values are a bit rough. The cast’s admirable enthusiasm only goes so far when you can’t hear what they’re singing due to spotty sound. (Maybe it’s a bit like Rainbow Stage after all.) The staging varies from professional (as in the choreographed number Do the Necronomicon) to utterly chaotic.

Unlike The Rocky Horror Show, the best parts are in the second act, especially Slade’s hilariously plaintive rendition of All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Kandarian Demons, De Jaeger’s ode to the obligatory horror movie redneck, Good Old Reliable Jake, and David Fox’s showstopper Bit Part Demon, the song that celebrates those luckless characters who are so quickly killed off, they barely get screen time.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

Randall King
Reporter

In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat.

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