Evil Dead Offers Pure Bloody Fun

Audience members typically return to their front-row seats after intermission with a refreshment, perhaps the occasional candy bar in hand. But at the New World Stages they carry another essential theater-going condiment-a poncho. Expecting rain? No-that would be blood in this gruesome and ghastly new production, Evil Dead: The Musical, based on Sam Raimi's low-budget horror flicks of the same name.

Yes, the audience does receive a nice sprinkling of demon blood. And, yes, the musical is built upon the traditional horror movie scenario: college kids engage in illicit activities including breaking and entering, sex, and board games (gasp!), and ultimately pay the price.

But Evil Dead has no pretenses about it. It doesn't aim to scare, it doesn't aim to fool, and it certainly doesn't aim to preach a puritanical message. Its chief goal is to entertain, and it does just that. The only trick up its sleeve is its humorous display of the predictable plight of its characters.

The plot is simple. Five friends take a road trip to an old cabin in the woods that was once inhabited by a professor trying to translate the ancient Book of the Dead: The Necronomicon. They play a tape of his ancient Candarian translations, unleashing the evil spirits from deep within the woods. One after another they turn into evil deadites, leaving only the hero as the last remaining human. With the help of the professor's daughter and her two sidekicks, he faces the grisly task of dismembering the demons and dispelling the spirits back to their dwelling place among the shadows in the forest.

The characters driving to the cabin in the woods seem as flat and generic as the stick-puppet bear and bunny that prance across scenic designer David Gallo's two-dimensional canvas of grass and trees.

However, this color-by-number cast succeeds as an animated ensemble. There's the all-American boy with his all-American girl and his bookish little sis, as well as the player and his whore. But the lack of depth and nuance here is intentional. With book and lyrics by George Reinblatt, Evil Dead successfully mocks the traditional menagerie of horror movie characters.

Ryan Ward (Ash) and Jennifer Byrne (Linda) spin a hilarious tale of a teenage workplace romance in the duet "Housewares Employee," but are essentially too wholesome as a classic Barbie-Ken duo to sustain interest without their supporting counterparts. Ward, whose macho-man heroism is often confused with paternal sentiments, is at his best during the number "What the Fuck Was That?" as he dances the tango with his best friend Scott, played by Brandon Wardell.

Most of the laughs and sight-gags come from Jenna Coker (Cheryl) who is accosted by the infamous raping trees from the first Raimi movie and rattles off a litany of horrible puns each time she pops out from beyond the cellar door. The most impressive vocals of the night come from Tom Walker (Ed and Moose) in "Bit Part Demon," a whole song dedicated to the plight of having a small role. After meeting his fate and joining the clan of deceased zombies, Walker shows that there are no small parts in show business, just dead ones.

Gratuitous and copious as it is, the spurting blood does less than one might expect to bridge the precarious divide between actor and audience. If anything, it renders the audience more passive in relation to the action happening on stage-bodily fluid is literally strewn upon the first two rows. Although the sticky effect garners shrieks and squeals from the audience, if Louis Zakarian, special effects and makeup design artist, aimed for tangible audience interaction, he missed the mark. As far as originality goes, however, he was right on. After all, this is the only show where you can find someone singing while drinking blood at the same time.

Regrettably, the return to a two-dimensional backdrop in the final scene with the song "You Blew That B**** Away" does not provide a suitable conclusion to the saga of blood and gore. In this last tribute to the demons of "the cabin in the woods," the fresh humor that functioned so well throughout is reduced to an overwrought slapstick farce, flying baby and all. Just die already, dammit!

But expect the Candarian demons to wreak havoc upon the Off-Broadway scene for some time. With fans rooting for raping trees and cheering as Ash slices off his hand with a chainsaw, both memorable scenes from the Raimi movies, directors Hinton Battle and Christopher Bond have a cult classic on their hands. However, Evil Dead's success will ultimately rest on its pop-culture witticisms and catchy pop/rock ballads that provide a gentle but gruesome mockery of a genre that all too often takes itself too seriously.