Theater review: Evil Dead: The Musical

by Christopher Soden

Speaking as a man with sleep deprivation issues, I embrace the pleasure of zombie-dread with dubious anticipation. Like so many other horrific experiences, doled out in the controlled environment of theatre or film, the degree to which you’re willing to participate in the illusion can substantially enhance the thrill and chill factor but seriously undermine your repose. The more disbelief you suspend, the more you risk revisiting the same events in your nightmares. So it was with this cautious optimism I attended Evil Dead: The Musical with a friend, eager to be scared, but only just enough.

I was foolish to worry. Evil Dead: The Musical in many ways has the same raw, slapdash production values that made the 1983 Sam Raimi film so effective. With its deliriously goofy take on Grand Guignol and earthy, silly song lyrics, EDTM is giddy, eerie, playful satire, saturated with blood and creepy, ferocious looking ghouls. The jokes are groaners, the pop culture references current and the gore, plentiful. Armed with a rifle, chainsaw, axe, or whatever weapon comes immediately to hand, Ash (Zac Ramsey) the hero, is prepared for any mayhem and menace the demon-possessed zombies can dish out.

Five college students appropriate a deserted cabin in the woods, figuring they can have a great spring break on the cheap. Ash, his sister (Cheryl), his girlfriend (Linda), his best friend (Scotty), and a girl Scotty picked up in a bar (Shelly) move in, completely unaware of the terror that awaits them. After stumbling on a copy of the Necromonicon (bound in flesh and written in blood) and accidentally playing a tape in a foreign language, invoking malignant spirits, the fun begins. When Cheryl gets the heebie-jeebies, Ash attempts to take his sister to a hotel, only to discover the bridge has been mysteriously and completely destroyed. Not long after they return to the cabin, Cheryl appears to be possessed and especially (gulp!) hungry.

In true horror-movie fashion, zombie fever runs amok and the dismemberment and mutilation abounds. In maybe not-so-authentic horror movie fashion, we have a malevolent moose, Ed, the bit-part demon, Jake, the token cornpone with lots of moxie and a perpetual hard-on, and a chorus line of zombies dancing to “the Necromonicon.” Paying tribute to splatter films while insolently mocking their misogyny, teenage libido, and pretzel logic, EDTM cheerfully goes way past the top, never missing an opportunity for a gag, a song, a ridiculous dance or a chance, to baptize the audience in sticky icky gore. When Ash, looking like a demented Donnie Osmond, starts wielding that chainsaw and wraps a stump in duct tape, the whole melange takes on a cartoony chaotic sort of glow.

Choreographer Brittany Levraea has brought much variety and wry wit to the numerous dance routines, from tango to soft shoe. Melody Jones has crafted some deliciously frightening makeup for the horde of encroaching and famished zombies. I’m inferring much of the inspiration for costume and set came from Director Billy Fountain and Assistant Director Zac Ramsey, as the cast is credited for both of these aspects. Outstanding performances in this pack of brilliant, manic lunatics include: Stephanie Felton, Shane Strawbridge, Brittany Levraea, Clayton Younkin, and Zac Ramsey.

Christopher Soden is a Dallas-Fort Worth area theater critic who also writes for The Column.