Edge New York City - October 26 2006
http://www.edgenewyork.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&
sc=theatre&sc2=features&sc3=&id=3012
Horror Show - "Evil Dead" Takes The Stage
by Ellen Wernecke
EDGE Entertainment Contributor
It was just another sequel to a hit on-the-cheap horror flick, albeit one in which the jokes were more memorable than the screams. But since then, Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn has gained a fanatical international audience, with crazed fans standing in line for hours to meet star Bruce "Ash" Campbell.
Now Christopher Bond is hoping Evil Dead: The Musical, a stage adaptation of Sam Raimi’s trilogy which began as a cult hit in a Canadian bar, will reach similar status Off-Broadway when it officially opens November 1.
Bond, the co-director and co-creator of the show, first saw Evil Dead 2 as a video-store employee. "It just screamed musical," he says. "It all happened on one set, the cabin in the woods. The protagonist has his witty lines and his swagger and his cheese. Zombies can sing and dance." Bond and friend George Reinblatt started working on it while Bond was still performing in Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding at Second City Toronto. "I had my job at night being goofy at this wedding, and George and Frank [Cipolla, who co-wrote the music along with Reinblatt and Melissa Morris] and I were working on the show."
Bond had also performed in Rocky Horror Picture Show, and says he was inspired by that cult following. "That’s the kind of audience I want to see," Bond says. "I want to see any kind of audience, but especially this new passionate audience, not just a traditional theatre audience. Wouldn’t it be great to do a show that got that kind of audience reaction?"
Still, Bond says he never expected the show to get as popular as it did when it opened at Toronto’s Tranzac club in 2003. "We had guys from Texas and Arizona flying in to see the musical," he says. "We have this group of guys from Rochester who go four or five times every run." Suddenly the show had scored an invite to the Montreal Just For Laughs festival in 2004, after which producers started talking about bringing it Stateside. That’s when Bond’s co-director Hinton Battle, a three-time Tony Award winner who originated the role of the Scarecrow on Broadway in The Wiz, entered the picture.
"Hinton is horribly talented," Bond says. "He oozes talent and it added a layer to our show that we’d never had before. We’d had choreography before, but it was - how do I say this - I did most of it, and I can’t dance." Like the choreography, the musical incorporates a variety of styles in its numbers -- the inspiration for which Bond credits none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is every kid’s first show." Bond says. "What I like about ’Joseph’ is that all the songs are different. There’s a disco number, a country number, a calypso song.In Evil Dead we have a tango number, we have a disco number, ’80s rock power ballad... all those different genres knock you over because they all sound so different." While Bond is tight-lipped on the exact appearance of the dancing, singing zombies, he promises numbers that "will kick you in the ass, and then kick you in the ass again," including one of his favorites, What The Fuck Was That? Bond cites Gilbert and Sullivan as one of his influences, but says the dialogue in Evil Dead: The Musical is very South Park. "We’re not trying to be Hairspray, even though I loved Hairspray," Bond says. "We can’t do that Broadway thing."
Still, the distance between Bond’s show and Broadway has gotten considerably narrower: New York gossip blog Gawker.com broke the news recently that Neil Patrick Harris, himself no stranger to the Great White Way since his turns in Cabaret and "Assassins," had attended a performance of Evil Dead: The Musical.
"Doogie Howser as Ash? I don’t even know if he can sing, but I’d be happy to have a meeting with him," Bond says. "Throw a chainsaw on him, see how it goes." Of course, the big question is: What does Campbell think about it? Envy the audiences who already have their tickets for the November 2 show, after which Ash himself will participate in a talkback.
