Self-mutilation and decapitation and murderous demons are not typically the stuff of musical theater, even at its edgiest or campiest best.
This is no “My Fair Lady.” It makes “Little Shop of Horrors” look like “My Fair Lady.”
Here is Ash, portrayed by Louisville musician Scott Anthony, taking a chainsaw to his right hand — and to his unbearably cheerful girlfriend. Both are possessed by demons and must be gotten rid of, an action that results in a gusher of stage blood so torrential that the first three rows of the Alley Theater audience are issued plastic ponchos and goggles.
And what does Ash do after this moment of unspeakable albeit necessary brutality?
He sings about it.
“What the ---- was that?” Ash sings urgently in unison with his best friend Scott (Jason Potts).
“Your sister has turned into a zombie,” Scott replies.
“What the ---- was that?” they sing.
“Your girlfriend was a demon, too,” Ash sings, ruefully.
Based on the cult-classic 1981 horror film “Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead: The Musical” melds haunted-house machinations with Broadway pastiche — well, off-Broadway pastiche — to pay homage and to add a new layer of playful amusement to the original film and its two sequels, “Evil Dead2” and “Army of Darkness.” Those films launched the career of director Sam Raimi, best known these days for directing the “Spider-Man” film franchise, as well as B-movie legend Bruce Campbell.
It was an epiphany, not a demon-infested nightmare, that awoke Jake Wheat and led to this locally rendered, relatively sophisticated production in Louisville.
Wheat discovered this odd musical, which opened in 2003 in Toronto, while goofing off on the Internet and was instantly fascinated. The show combined some of his favorite entertainment genres — live theater and excessively gory/ridiculous horror films. “Evil Dead: The Musical” was a kitschy new pop-culture plaything and, of course, not playing anywhere near Louisville. Nor would it anytime soon.
“I was all over YouTube looking it up, and it was off-Broadway in New York, in South Korea, in Toronto — there were all these productions that were nowhere near where we were,” Wheat said. “I just really wanted to see this show. Well, as luck would have it, the rights became available. I decided if you can't go see it, you need to do it yourself.”
Enter Joey Arena, a staple of Louisville's alternative theater scene and a former creative director at the Baxter Avenue Morgue, a popular Phoenix Hill haunted house with features that were inspired in large part by films like “Evil Dead.”
Their collaboration — and an inspired series of serendipitous breaks — led to a Louisville production of “Evil Dead: The Musical.”
Back to life
“Evil Dead: The Musical” is a new production by the Alley Theater, which has existed on and off over two decades under the direction of Scott Davis. Having lost its latest venue in the former downtown nightclub complex City Block, the Alley Theater collaborated with the arts collective Art Sanctuary to convert an abandoned factory — a slightly creepy one, no less — on East Washington Street in Butchertown into a working alternative theater.
A member of the Alley Theater for 16 years, Arena said Wheat's e-mail imploring him to co-produce a production of “Evil Dead: The Musical” was timed just right for the troupe to launch its new performance space in what developers have dubbed The Pointe. The production crew spent hours clearing out abandoned junk materials and scrubbing off layers of dirt and dust.
“We built the theater and built the show at the same time,” Arena said. “We had a lot of people in here from both Art Sanctuary and the theater and our production as well. It's a lot of work, like trying to take out your liver while still in medical school.”
The quick turnaround surprised even Wheat, whose day job is marketing country music acts for Universal Records. Wheat's initial plan was for the Louisville producton of “Evil Dead: The Musical” to debut in October 2010. But Arena persisted. The rights were available now, and he was convinced that the Alley Theater/Art Sanctuary complex could be made ready by October, just in time to attract the Halloween thrill-seekers he had serviced at the Baxter Avenue Morgue. Once Wheat became sold on the idea, they worked to secure financing, began hiring crew and held auditions.
The idea was to give the new Alley Theater a big splash, and they've gotten it — a big, bloody one.
“It's been an expensive, and painful and long journey, but it's been amazing,” Arena said. “I'm more proud of this than anything I've ever done in my life.”
His time working in haunted houses made Arena a uniquely adept choice to direct “Evil Dead: The Musical.” The Louisville production has plenty of what Arena calls “Baxter Avenue Morgue technology,” particularly in the computer-controlled system that sprays blood on the audience.
“Evil Dead” and its subsequent sequels are more than just mere entertainment, Arena said. Rather, they set a new standard for the horror genre, which suddenly found its sense of humor again and never looked back.
“‘Evil Dead2' is one of my favorite horror movies of all-time because it was funny,” Arena said. “It was one of the first ones I remember being tongue-in-cheek — what we've come to consider of black comedy and what we've come to expect of horror movies.… Everything sprang from that. Freddy Krueger comes from ‘Evil Dead2,' in my opinion.”
Unleash the demons
Subhead
The “Evil Dead” films revolve around Ash Williams — a college student and clerk at the fictional superstore S-Mart — and four friends on spring break who venture to a secluded cabin in a rather creepy forest. There, they unwittingly unleash vicious demons whom Ash must destroy in order to survive.
The film's goriness (which earned it a rare NC-17 rating when it was re-released in 1994) attracted a loyal following of film enthusiasts drawn to the franchise's excesses and its comic book-style humor that evolved over the two sequels. Raimi and Campbell, who starred as Ash, both went on to enjoy mainstream careers (like Raimi, Campbell successfully moved out of horror films) but will always count on a core legion of “Evil Dead” fanatics.
The films have an element of camp — but a musical? That's George Reinblatt's fault.
Reinblatt is the Toronto artist who wrote the book and lyrics for “Evil Dead: The Musical,” which had a low-key debut in Toronto in 2003 but, buoyed by word-of-mouth buzz and the films' popularity, debuted in New York off-Broadway in 2006 for a brief run. This year, the staging rights were opened up to producers outside the original production team, spurring a dozen productions around the country this fall.
The inspiration for writing “Evil Dead: The Musical” sprung from the franchise's evolution from a severe, brutal horror film into the gross but hilarious kitsch of the final chapter, 1992's “Army of Darkness.” (“Evil Dead 2,” released in 1987, bridged the two sensibilities.)
“‘Evil Dead' was a serious horror movie, but it was cheesy,” Reinblatt said via telephone from Toronto. “The second one was a little more cheesy and fun. The third one was just over-the-top cheese and fun. We like to think this takes it one step further.”
The musical has evolved, too. The music was refined and tweaked from the earliest Toronto workshops through the off-Broadway debut — and the Louisville production has its perspective, too.
The basic story is intact for the Louisville production, beginning with the first song, “Cabin in the Woods.” (“We're five college students on our way to an old abandoned cabin in the woods — oh yeah!”) But Arena said he wanted to tone down the campiness of the Toronto performances and add more emotive acting.
“We went for a different brand of humor than they did,” Arena said. “Theirs was complete camp — there's very little serious emotion in it. It was purely to make fun. As I told my actors through rehearsals, ‘We want people to care that you had to cut your own hand off, that you had to cut your girlfriend's head off.'”
For Anthony, the problem was finding a way out from under the enormous, chainsaw-wielding shadow cast by Campbell.
“Part of the challenge is that part of the character is set up for you,” Anthony said. “I try not to make it a simple Bruce Campbell impersonation.”
Anthony has been involved in theater in Louisville since the mid-1980s, and has played music for a half-dozen productions. He found out about “Evil Dead: The Musical” through his fiancée, Lisa Frye, the president of Art Sanctuary, and was quickly approached by Arena and Davis about serving as music director.
But once he got involved in the production, he decided to stretch himself and pursue the lead role.
Lest hardcore fans get the wrong idea, he assures them that the spirit of Campbell will be there, especially when it comes to the lines they, “Lebowski”-like, love to quote, such as the quip, “Good, bad — I'm the guy with the gun.”
“When I get to those, I try to stay true to Bruce,” Anthony said, “to give those people what they came for.”
Subhead
While Ash is both a lead character and a ringleader, every character — from poor, possessed Cheryl to the lovable bumpkin Jake — has a turn leading a tune. But Ash is the constant through the musical, which consists more of a series of gory and hilarious predicaments than a captivating narrative.
The Alley Theater stage has professional sets, but The Pointe is a developing facility. Patrons move across scratched-up, creaky hardwood floors and fenced-off piles of junk — not out of place in an unsettling way — in a room that leads into the theater. The first three rows are designated the “Splatter Zone,” where you are certain to be sprayed with fake blood, if you're into that sort of thing. The rest of the seating — cabaret-style tables and traditional theater seats — is mostly safe from flying blood.
Audiences have been surprisingly receptive sitting in the “Splatter Zone,” said the show's choreographer, Valerie Hopkins, who, in her role as the character Annie, gets to sing a song titled “All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed By Candarian Demons.”
“It almost breaks the fourth wall,” she said. “It's great to see people who are so interested that they're almost participating.”
Louisville loves macabre
And the producers never doubted the musical's prospects, just because they know Louisville pretty well.
“How could it not? We're a zombie town,” Arena said, citing the annual Louisville Zombie Attack in August and the plethora of haunted houses every October. “I mean, Christ, Louisville is Zombie City. … People love this ----. And if you want people who love this ---- to come see it, you need people who love this ----.”
“Evil Dead: The Musical” opened Oct. 1, and tickets have sold briskly, particularly for “Splatter Zone” seats at weekend shows. The show runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday through Oct. 31, but, like those persistent demons, the show won't die at the Alley Theater after the final performance on Halloween. The plan is to make “Evil Dead: The Musical” an October classic.
“We're hoping to turn this into our ‘Dracula,' our ‘Nutcracker,'” Arena said.
