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I have yet to see Drag Me to Hell, although many have told me how much I will like it. The director of that movie, Sam Raimi, is probably best known for directing the first three Spiderman films. Before those blockbusters, he was a well regarded low budget horror director. His Evil Dead trilogy (which includes Evil Dead 1 and 2 as well as Army of Darkness) grew progressively more comedic but has legions of fans for its goriness, gruesomeness and awesomeness. The main character, Ash, is played in the movies by the greatly talented Bruce Campbell, who has never been offered a bad movie that he did not accept (or so it seems). The movies are definitely cult classics. For those who know them, there are many quotable lines and sequences. The most obvious evolution would be to make a musical out of the franchise… Right?

Theatre, and especially musical theatre, is something that I am very passionate about. Check out my iTunes library and you will see more than a few albums that have the sub-heading “Original Broadway Cast Recording”. To say that I was excited for the marriage between two of my loves, musical theatre and bloody gore, is an understatement to the point of ridiculousness. Heck, it was called Evil Dead: The Musical! I was in the so-called “splatter zone”. I was practically giddy.

The show is a truncated version of the movies. A small group goes out to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of fun and depravity. Unfortunately, they listen to an audio recording that unleashes evil and soon they are being possessed by demons and killing or attacking one another (and, in one case, themselves). In between, there are buckets of blood, foul-mouthed tirades and, of course, singing and dancing.

The play is definitely campy. The songs are simple but funny. There has been no attempt to make the show any deeper than it is trying to be. Comparisons to The Rocky Horror Picture Show are pretty apt. There is a poster of Rocky Horror hanging on the back wall of the set. This was an evening of over-the-top theatrics. This is also why it never attains greatness.

Allow me to explain. In any musical the music should be the most important aspect. Whether the score is entirely hummable like a Rodgers and Hammerstein show, or sucker-punches you as a whole piece like many of Stephen Sondheim’s opuses do, the music is key. Evil Dead falls prey to what many of the so-called jukebox musicals succumb to. That is, the music feels like an afterthought or is wedged into the show because the producers needed another song. No song truly feels organic to the show. They are fun and upbeat, but none would make it onto my playlist so that I could listen again and again.

The set is a definite highlight. Great care has been taken to make it look spectacular. It is the inside of a cabin, but throughout the course of the show many object come to life. These objects, of course interact with the actors. The majority of the players rip into their jobs with a manic fervor. I would make special mention of Jamie Togazzini who plays “Cheryl”, Christian Goutsis who plays “Scotty”, and Tyler Rive who plays our hero “Ash”. All three are incredible comic actors. They are never boring to watch, and they anchor the whole show.

The best part of the play is near the end of the show when a group of corpses runs through the audience squirting blood onto the crowd. While my shirt stayed fairly dry, my pants were drenched with blood as I exited the theatre. People’s heads turned and there was obvious staring because they had no idea why a bunch of people were walking downtown covered in blood. The friend I saw the show with pondered that it would be a great social experiment to walk down a street covered in blood just to see if anyone would approach you and see if you were alright… but that is another article for another day.

In the pantheon of musical theater, Evil Dead: The Musical will probably not ever attain the heights of critical or commercial praise as its peers. Who knows? Maybe that isn’t the main goal. It is there to entertain, and entertain it does. It is a wickedly fun show to watch, but is ultimately a show to be experienced rather than listen to.

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