Viliage Voice - October 24 2006
New York City, NY
Blood Work
by Silke Tudor
Ash, the square-jawed, slightly clueless stock clerk made infamous by the combined genius of actor Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi, stands in a jet stream of fake blood, removes his girlfriend's head with a chainsaw, and sings a plaintive refrain from the soon-to-be hit show tune "I'm Not a Killer."
And so concludes the riotous first act of Evil Dead: The Musical.
The audience is giddy.
"Listen up, you primitive screw-heads," says a young man in the crowd, quoting Ash as he squeezes past his friends seated in the "Splatter Zone" of the New World Stages. "Nobody panic! I'm going for alcohol!"
"First you wanna kill me, then you wanna kiss me!" replies his girlfriend with another recognizable line from Raimi's cult movie trilogy.
During intermission, the din of early-'80s cock rock is punctuated by a string of preferred Evil Dead quotes shouted by the audience: "Well, helloooo, Mr. Fancypants!" or "Give me back my hand . . . Give me back my hand!" One fan delivers Ash's entire "Boom Stick" soliloquy while standing under the boughs of a demon- possessed tree, and a few rows away, a woman wearing a "This is my boom stick" T-shirt waves her giant black Evil Dead: The Musical souvenir foam hand. It doesn't take long to realize that this is not your average crowd of theatergoers but a throng of dyed-in-the-wool devotees—the type of fans who return again and again to shout lines back at the cast during the performance. And they do.
"It's like the new Rocky Horror Picture Show," says a 24-year-old man named Random, whose grandparents are in attendance celebrating their 41st wedding anniversary. (Surprisingly, they are not the only septuagenarians in the house.) Granddad has a sick sense of humor, assures Random, and Grandma loves musicals, so "it's the perfect gift."
In preparation for Act II, Random tells his grandparents to don the disposable raincoats that the house has considerately supplied to the first three rows. However, most ticket holders in the Splatter Zone purposely wear pristine white T-shirts, which will resemble gruesome Rorschach tests by curtain call. Among them is 40-year-old Jimmy Psycho, singer for Psycho Charger, a horror- billy rock band that is no stranger to bloodshed. (During a show at Brooklyn's Galapagos, the band found itself sloshing across the stage in nearly two gallons of horror-show claret.) Next time Psycho comes to see Evil Dead: The Musical, it will be with his mother. "She'll really appreciate the action onstage," he says.
The action includes a dismembered hand, a singing moosehead, a small army of demons, a chainsaw armature, a comically possessed forest, a pun-spewing hell spawn, a decapitated zombie, several gallons of blood, and brilliantly delivered ditties such as "Look Who's Evil Now," "What the (Fuck Was That)?" "Bit Part Demon," and "Do the Necronomicon"— all of which are executed in a pitch-perfect combination of horror and humor that is wholly infectious.
"I would have liked more gore," admits 25-year-old Christopher Freas, who brought his new bride from Pennsylvania for their honeymoon. "[But] we plan on seeing it again Thanksgiving weekend."
