Evil Dead the Musical delivers blood, camp, and horror

Bloody, goofy, and ridiculous, Evil Dead the Musical presented by Equinox Theatre has been bleeding out since June 10th, and finishes up its gory run on July 16th. From what I gleaned from my brief research, The Bug Theater — where the blood spews — caters to all kinds of smaller-time productions, and Equinox is a group that puts on a lot of horror musicals (their next one will be the Toxic Avenger in August).

As a newcomer to the Lower Highlands, I was curious to check out this space, located just a block from me. I was also curious about a musical version of one of my favorite classic horror films. I’ve spent hours laughing at the ridiculously campy Evil Dead series, and marveling at how it manages to be one of the only truly good “so bad it’s good” movie franchises out there.

The Bug itself is a great space – tiny but comfy, with movie theater-style seating and a small bar in the back where patrons can choose from a small selection of soda, beer, mixed drinks, wine, and snacks. The first half of the seats were coated in plastic and labeled as “splatter seating” – patrons who were brave enough to sit up front would get pelted with fake blood, making the event feel more like a GWAR concert than a musical.

The story of Evil Dead is so classic it has become a rehashed and tired horror trope – five teens go to party at a cabin in the woods – what could go wrong? Of course, they end up contacting demons using an ancient book, all hell breaks loose, and they spend the night battling evil forces. This is exploited to no end in the play, as the characters self-consciously joke about how tired the storyline is. The story has also become something of a cult classic – in addition to this musical rendition, it spawned an entire series, a spin-off TV show featuring Bruce Campbell (who plays the star, Ash), and a recent re-make of the film that actually makes it scary and gory instead of just slapstick.

Overall, the musical made do with a very small budget – everything took place in front of one set (the lights just went down when they weren’t supposed to be in the cabin), the trees were characters dressed as trees, and the car was a cardboard cut-out.

The characters take almost any opportunity to fit in a song – for example, when a character turns into a deadite (an Evil Dead zombie, which differs from a regular zombie because they are the possessed dead and not sick with a zombie virus), they break into a song called “Look Who’s Evil Now” instead of immediately killing and maiming. The deadlites also all do a dance towards the end before they engage in an epic battle, and the scene where Ash gives his girlfriend a necklace was turned into a humorous love song.

The lead playing Ash did a good job of swaggering and flirting with all the female characters, and delivered the iconic moments where he loses his hand to the deadites, gets a shotgun, and gets a chainsaw for a hand, with vigor. The strongest performance by far was from Katelyn Kaenrick, who played Cheryl, Ash’s kid sister and the one who gets attacked by zombies first. Kendrick’s voice is killer — pun intended — and her acting is on point. She also played an adorable kid sister with cute bangs and pigtails, despite being a mother and behavioral therapist in real life.

Between the blood being spattered and the goofy songs, it’s next to impossible not to have a good time at this musical. There are also plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and even a few tasteful gay jokes (one character laments that all the men in her life were killed by demons, even her platonic gay friends, and the character playing the ghostly picture throws on a pink scarf and yells ‘hey’ in the middle of the song). However, there are going to be a few things about this performance that disappoint die-hard horror and musical fans alike.

Horror-wise, this is of course supposed to be pure camp. However, those who live and die by the genre are just plain sick of hearing the jokes about how all horror films are the same. Cabin in the Woods already beat this dead horse, and horror nerds will nod to the fact that Evil Dead is actually pretty creative because of a lot of the tropes it introduced, such as the evil, demonic book and the recurring horror hero who plows his way through the sequels. Also, a lot of the humor that I recognized as a fan of the films may have been lost on the other viewers. For example, Ash getting the chainsaw hand seemed random without the context of a full-set (where did the chainsaw come from?) and many of Ash’s signature moves, such as calling his shotgun his “boomstick” and flirting while killing deadites, are amazing when done by Bruce Campbell himself, but fall flat and seem out of place otherwise.

Additionally, as far as musicals go, there were some cases where the singing falls flat, and some of the songs are just plain obnoxious. Of course, they are meant to be, but at times the repetition of bad lyrics and out-of-sync choreography was more grating than it was hilarious.

That all being said, you should only go see a musical like this if you have a sense of humor – about your particular nerdy vices, be they horror, musicals, or both, and about things like racy sexual humor and poking fun at death. It’s all in good fun, and none of it is made to be taken too seriously. If you want a good laugh, and don’t mind some splash-back from the blood on stage, I’d recommend checking this performance out before it closes.