Toronto Star - Oct 21 2006
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Evil Dead guts it out to N.Y.

It's a bloody marvel, and now the monster musical that a trio of university pals brought to life in Toronto three years ago has graduated to the Great White Way

RICHARD OUZOUNIAN

NEW YORK

It's not unusual for heads to roll when a show is in previews here. But when you start tossing in arms, and soaking the audience with a shower of blood, then you know it can only mean one thing:

Evil Dead the Musical has come to the Big Apple.

It may have taken The Drowsy Chaperone eight years to move from the back room of the Rivoli to the lights of Broadway, but its gore-drenched sibling has gone from the Tranzac Club to the Great White Way in only three.

To be totally accurate, this raucous Canadian musical based on the 1981 and 1987 cult films Evil Dead I and II — which launched the career of director Sam Raimi — is playing in previews at the hip New World Stages space, just a block west of the conventional theatre district.

And that's just as it should be. Can you picture the patrons at a typical Broadway musical fighting to get into "The Splatter Zone"?

"It's what we call the first two rows," explains Christopher Bond, the show's director. "The Dead-ites line up for hours to buy those seats because you get drenched with gore from all the onstage mayhem."

"They have the option to wear ponchos that we provide," adds George Reinblatt, the show's author, "but most people decide to go bareback."

The three, thirtyish guys hanging out in the lobby of the theatre give off a lighthearted, friendly "we wish we were still students" kind of vibe. That's pretty unusual for men whose first show is about to get its Big Apple debut with the notorious New York critics, yet their mood fits this project perfectly.

In fact, this show's journey to Manhattan is nothing like the typical showbiz story. Reinblatt, Bond and composer Frank Cipolla were students together at Queen's University in the late 1990s, and Reinblatt cheerfully admits that the musical is infused with the ethos of student life at that Kingston institution.

"The message Queen's sends to the world is that we're smart, but we sure love to party a lot."

And the second part of that statement, at least, fits all the characters in the original Evil Dead movies. They're five horny kids who head off to a deserted cottage in the woods for a weekend of boozing and boffing. What they don't count on is discovering a 13th-century "book of the dead" that has the power to bring a frightening horde of demons to life.

After that, man, it's hold on to your chainsaw because — in one of the immortal lines from the film — it's "time to start kicking some demon ass."

There have been stranger plots for a musical (Sweeney Todd, for starters), but that didn't stop this crew.

The idea for the show officially took shape "at a bar in a night in 2002," according to Reinblatt. "when Chris was acting in The Rocky Horror Show and we decided to create a cult horror musical of our own."

They all loved the Evil Dead movies and knew they had the kind of rabid fan base that their project needed. They also knew a few things had to change about the story for it to work on stage, but the movies' engagingly light touch (perhaps best expressed when lead character Ash's hand becomes possessed and starts attacking him) had to stay. Hence the songs, with titles like "Look Who's Evil Now." To everyone's surprise, when they contacted Raimi, who had created the films before moving on to glossier fare like Spider-Man, he gave them his blessing.

"He said, `Do it now for free and we'll work out the details later,'" recollects Reinblatt.

Next, they enlisted the services of Cipolla to compose the music and Bond booked the Tranzac Club before they had even written a word.

"I had an MBA in arts and media management," volunteers Cipolla, "and I've managed ballet companies and marching bands." Reinblatt was a comedy writer, coming up with stuff for everyone from Trish Stratus to Rick Mercer. Only Bond was actually working in theatre.

"We put it up real quick and dirty," laughs Bond, "and everyone did it for free."

"There was no written music," adds Cipolla. "All the arrangements were done on the fly."

But somehow they opened — on the night of the great blackout in August of 2003.

"At first, we thought, `This is it, we're finished,'" sighs Reinblatt, "but within four days it had become a crazy phenomenon and people were lining up down the block for 10 hours to get in."

Like other crazy Fringe-ish projects, it might have ended there — if Reinblatt hadn't called up producer Jeffrey Latimer.

"George said, `We have something here, but we don't know what it is,'" remembers Latimer, "so I came to see the show and I was just blown away. It's been the four of us together since then."

The first thing they did was remount the show that October, and invite the media. The reviews were encouraging and the crowds went wild.

"We had to move carefully," insists Latimer. "We wanted the bigger audience, but we didn't want to lose the spirit of the piece."

In what would prove to be a brilliant move, they hooked up next with the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal, where it played a highly successful run in the summer of 2004 and attracted a lot of New York interest.

"After Montreal," says Latimer, "we knew we'd be going to New York. The only question was when."

The creators all made some pivotal decisions, vowing that Bond would direct the show in New York and that Ryan Ward — who had played the leading role of Ash from the beginning — would continue.

That makes for another similarity with The Drowsy Chaperone, which kept its signature star, Bob Martin, all the way from the Fringe to the Tony Awards.

All the pieces were finally in place and the show began rehearsals. Three-time Tony Award-winner Hinton Battle came onboard to co-direct with Bond, and a whole crew of New York professionals tried to engage with these wack dudes from Queen's.

University, that is.

"We're definitely hands-on writers," asserts Reinblatt. "We even test the blood out ourselves." And Cipolla concurs that "they've never seen anything like us in New York."

"We're making sure the show maintains its campy integrity," says Bond. "That's why we're down here making sure no one misses a beat."

So far, they've got reason to be optimistic. Since launching a few weeks ago, their myspace site (myspace.com/evildeadthemusical) has seen over 33,000 people sign up for it. And the buzz is gently building — on Halloween morning the cast will sing a song from the show ("All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons") on The View.

And while some fans of conventional musical theatre have been dissing the show online, the dedicated Dead-ites packing the theatre have been loud in their praises.

On Nov. 1, the production will get its opening night; Reinblatt practically licks his chops describing it.

"It's being sponsored by tequila and White Castle, so I imagine it will get ugly pretty fast."

Then the creators will have to face the reviews, but they seem to be prepared.

"We put on the show we wanted to put on," maintains Reinblatt. "That's what we came down here for."

And maybe the reviewers will agree with Cipolla's own verdict. "It's a collegiate musical," he says, "that graduated."