'Evil Dead The Musical' Returns to the Vogel In Red Bank, Full of Campy, Gory, and Horrific Entertainment
It’s back! "Evil Dead: The Musical" at The Vogel in Red Bank, New Jersey. This is the third time Phoenix Productions has produced this crowd-pleaser, an October tradition. Performances are on Friday, October 17, at 7 PM, and Saturday, October 18, at 6 PM and 9 PM, at the intimate, state-of-the-art venue located within the Count Basie Center For The Arts.
"Evil Dead: The Musical" is a rock musical stage play based on the cult film classics: The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead 2 (1987), and Army of Darkness (1993). The musical takes elements and characters from all three films to create its own unique, comedic, and gory theatrical experience.
The story follows five college students who go to an abandoned cabin in the woods, where they discover an ancient book and accidentally unleash an evil force that turns them into demons. It’s all up to Ash, a housewares employee turned demon-killing hero, and his trusty chainsaw to save the day. Blood flies. Limbs are dismembered. Demons tell bad jokes…All done to music. The songs in the show are off the wall as well, with titles like "All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Kandarian Demons" and "What the F**k was That?" There's a lot of interplay between the show and the audience, especially for those who purchase splatter zone tickets, because a big fight scene is staged at the end, where a lot of fake blood gets tossed around.
"Evil Dead: The Musical" debuted on stage in 2003 in Toronto, becoming a huge hit and moving onto a New York Off-Broadway run in 2006. The book and lyrics are by George Reinblatt, with music by Frank Cipolla, Christopher Bond, Melissa Morris, and George Reinblatt. The characters were originally created by childhood friends and collaborators Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi, the Hollywood filmmaker best known also for the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–2007).
The 1981 supernatural horror film The Evil Dead marked a then-21-year-old Raimi’s directorial debut; Campbell played the lead character Ash. The film is regarded as funny despite its serious, gruesome subject matter due to a shoestring budget, newbie cast, and Raimi's flair for over-the-top, slapstick-infused filmmaking, making the visual effects and acting campy. Its sequels leaned further into the humorous elements, turning them into horror-comedies.
It goes without saying that musical appeals to the movie’s fanbase. But Phoenix Productions is quick to point out that "you don’t need to be a fan of The Evil Dead to love this show. You don’t need to be a fan of horror to love this show. You don’t even need to be a fan of musicals to love this show. As long as you like having fun, this show is for you." The musical pokes fun at the horror genre and, in doing so, appeals to a broader audience, notes the show’s producers.
"The Sam Raimi original film is indeed a huge cult classic. It kind of reinvented the B-movie in a really new and fresh way. And people kind of glommed onto the fact that it really wasn't that good, but it was still engaging," says James Grausam, managing artistic director of Phoenix Productions and director of "Evil Dead: The Musical" at The Vogel.
Grausam adds, "There's a joke in the script where one of the characters comes out and her boyfriend says, 'How was your flight?' She says, 'Not good. The in-flight movie was Spider-Man,' and I just got to say, 'Yeesh, that was not well-directed.'" And the audience just roars with laughter because they get that joke, that it's the same person who wrote and directed the movie."
Evil Dead has become a franchise that consists of five feature films and a television series. Raimi would go on to direct such films as The Quick and the Dead, Drag Me to Hell, Oz the Great and Powerful, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Raimi has also made his mark on pop culture by producing such television series as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess.
Grausam believes the musical resonates with everyone who loves the movie, because "there's this reverence for these characters. Ash, the chainsaw-wielding Demon Hunter, is such a hero to so many people," he explains. "The musical is very much tongue in cheek, honoring the movie’s lack of quality (while acknowledging) it's still an important film."
Phoenix Productions’ approach to "Evil Dead: The Musical" is to honor the source material. While there have been several renditions, this production has a whole new cast who have put fresh eyes and their own stamp on it. "The (actors playing these characters) understand that they're in this very volatile, dangerous situation and the more realistic you play that," adds Grausam, "the funnier it will be to the audience because it just seems ridiculous."
Grausam was a music major in college before setting his sights on the directing world, where you get a 360-degree view of a production. He has directed several musicals for Phoenix Productions at the Count Basie Center for the Arts. “Truthfulness is the way I approach almost everything I direct, no matter if it's a high-stakes comedy or a musical like 'Fiddler on the Roof,'" he says.
For over 35 years, Phoenix Productions has been dedicated to the mission of providing quality theatrical experiences on both sides of the footlights, producing over 100 main stage shows and providing on-stage and backstage opportunities to artists. "We started in 1988 as a community theater organization, and we've been performing on the Count Basie stage since 1990," Grausam says. "I think that community theater serves a really strong purpose in bringing the community together. Utilizing the arts, not only to tell some fun stories, but also important stories. Allowing the community to come together is a great way to unify us all because who doesn't love a musical, right?"
Tickets to "Evil Dead: The Musical" at The Vogel range in price from $51 to $75 and are available through Ticketmaster.
