By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Five college kids head up to a cabin in the woods for spring break. What could go wrong?
The cabin is accessible only by crossing this one bridge. We know this because the leader of this adventure mentions it casually, and then repeats it for emphasis. So, you just know something bad is going to happen to that bridge before the night is through. And the fate of our young characters is just as certain.
This spring break adventure goes bad with comic results.
The BGSU Department of Theatre and Film is staging “The Evil Dead: The Musical” opening tonight (April 13) and continuing Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. in Donnell Theatre in the Wolfe Center for the Arts on campus.
Directed by Jonathan Chambers, the script plays out as an extended improv comic skit inspired by “The Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead 2.” and “Army of Darkness” with all the expected implausibilities, inconsistencies, and horrifically bad puns from a cackling, screeching demon who otherwise would be a perfectly fine person. The cast performs the musical with that kind freewheeling energy.
The humor is as subtle as a chainsaw to the neck, and the resulting gush of blood spurting into the front row sets.
Each of the characters seems plucked from central casting.
Ash (Logan May) is a hunk with a heart of gold who just wants some time with his girlfriend Linda (Isabelle Grima). They met at work at S-Mart. Their romance is detailed in the song “Housewares Employee.” It’s nice to get together away from work.
With them is sex-crazed Scott (Braden Evens) a party animal who also has a young woman in tow – Shelly (Grace Whetstone) whom he met just a couple nights before in a bar. They are there will one intention – to make the house shake with their sexual acrobatics. At one point when Ash has to leave the cabin, Scott immediately proposes a threesome to Shelly and Linda. The idea is dismissed.
The fifth wheel in the group is Cheryl (Piper Evans), Ash’s nerdy sister. Scott constantly berates her as “a stupid bitch” – foul language flies even more freely than the blood.
They are not renting the cabin but literally, unbeknownst to the owners, crashing there. Poor choice. Immediately they sense something is awry.
Cheryl is particularly insistent that the place is haunted, but Scott just sees her as a buzz kill.
Then they discover that the bridge has been wrecked.
There’s a wild game of guess the word during which one of the players knows answers to the questions before they are asked.
The demons have arrived.
As things turn worse, both in terms of violence and bad puns, we meet Annie (Whetstone) and Ed (Dylan Haywood) who are on the way to the cabin. Annie’s family owns the place, and she thinks her father, who studies the occult, is there. When they discover the bridge is out they seek the help of Jake (Justin Andrews), the dim-witted local, who just happens to know of a trail to the cabin.
Their arrival takes the havoc to another level.
One demon is dismissed as being a “Bit-Part Demon” who is just there to be disposed of. Annie laments that “All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons.” (Yes, that’s “Candarian” not “Canadian” as spellcheck insists, though I’m not sure what is scarier.)
And those demons show they are party-animals and launch into a raucous 1960s flavored dance number “Do the Necronomicon.” Timothy Frost is responsible both for the choreography of the dances and the fights which can be distinguished by whether they are set to music or not. The garage band sound is provided by a rock trio led by music director Steven Naylor with guitarist Miles Anderson and percussionist Riley Kramer.
Whether “this”Evil Dead: The Musical” has a happy ending will probably be determined by how much fake blood you get splattered on you, and how you feel about that.
