Toronto Star - November 2 2006

A bloody awesome time

RICHARD OUZOUNIAN

There's something wonderful about being true to your school and that's the best part about Evil Dead the Musical, which opened last night at New World Stages.

This blood-soaked yet beguiling show has somehow managed to keep the whole frat-boys-on-a-bender aesthetic that it's embraced since its initial manifestation at the Tranzac Club in 2003, only now it's been given a slick enough production to help it succeed in the Big Apple.

Based on the classic "horny-kids-in-a-cabin" films that director Sam Raimi made before he hit the big time with Spider-Man, Evil Dead the Musical is not likely to appeal to those who prefer their singing and dancing served up with a goodly portion of social significance.

This show means to do nothing but entertain, in a bold, broad style that both its fans and detractors can accurately describe with the term "collegiate." (And the institution of higher learning in question would be Queen's University, where all of the show's creators first met.)

The book and lyrics by George Reinblatt embrace every joke about gonad-governed guys and morally challenged gals that you can imagine. Just when you think, "Oh no, they're not going to say that," they do, and that's what makes the evening fly.

But Reinblatt also knows what he's doing and for a theatre novice, he's finessed a slick job of compressing Raimi's films into a bright, breezy two hours.
His lyrics also demonstrate how to kick in with a bit of irony when needed and the way he rhymes things like "Abercrombie" with "zombie" remains one of the show's delights.

The music by Frank Cipolla, with assistance from Reinblatt, Melissa Morris and director Christopher Bond, is cheerfully derivative, evoking the spirits of Grease, The Rocky Horror Show and Little of Shop of Horrors as surely as if they had summoned them up at a musical comedy séance.

But somehow, the songs all have an infectious quality of their own and I heard audience members happily singing them as they left the theatre after the Sunday night press preview I attended.

In the end, however, you don't go to a show like this for the book, music and lyrics. You're not even there for the clever set design of David Gallo, which hides more special effects than Joan Collins's makeup.

Yes, the lighting of Jason Lyons is a spiffy Technicolor nightmare and Cynthia Nordstrom's costumes are appropriately tacky with a capital "T," while Bond has kept it all moving slickly and his co-director and choreographer, Hinton Battle, turns carnage into dance moves with remarkable ease.

But none of that really matters.

You come to Evil Dead the Musical for the blood, pure and simple.

The minute Ryan Ward's beleaguered hero Ash picks up a chainsaw to fight the hordes of Candarian demons descending on him, you hear the kind of rustle of anticipation in the audience you used to encounter just before Carol Channing came down the staircase in Hello, Dolly!
This is it: the money shot.

And thanks to the special effects of Louis Zakarian, it doesn't disappoint. The blood shoots, it soars, it spurts, it cascades. It drenches people in the first few rows of the theatre (courteously called "The Spatter Zone") and makes a mess of everyone and everything onstage.

Then in Act II, things go even further. I know that in some ways it's appealing to the baser instincts of mankind, but as Ash has to keep coming up with more inventive ways to dispatch the baddies, we cheer with delight as each outrageous torrent of plasma pours forth.

It's a bloody awesome spectacle.

The cast are a game bunch of troupers who double roles, slip in and out of makeup, serve as conduits for gallons of gore, and still manage to sing and dance with style.

My favourites included Jenna Coker as sister Cheryl, the nerd who turns into a pun-crazy monster, Renée Klapmeyer, doubling beautifully as the slutty Shelly and the know-it-all Annie, and Brandon Wardell as Scott, the dumbest uber-jock you've ever met.

Best of all is the sole Canadian in the cast, Ryan Ward, playing the unlikeliest of heroes, Ash. He mixes equal portions of Jimmy Stewart and Nicolas Cage to create a character at once noble, yet demented. And the wholehearted commitment with which he throws himself into this hemoglobin-soaked horror show takes a certain kind of twisted nobility.

Conventional musical theatre audiences may not find it to their taste, but the hordes of young people out there eager to embrace their inner zombies should keep Evil Dead the Musical running for a long time.