Theater: Camping it Up

The cast of IWCC’s “Evil Dead: The Musical.”

More Theater

“Evil Dead: The Musical”
Through Saturday, Nov. 21
Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
The Arts Center
Iowa Western Community College, 2700 College Road, Council Bluffs
Tickets: $5 adults, $3 seniors and students
712-388-7140

“I told you to die,” our chopper-wielding hero intones to a severed head. “Don’t make me axe you again.”

Sure, the script, lyrics and plotline are downright sophomoric, but that’s just fine because the cast itself is rather sophomore-ish, not to mention junior-ish and senior-ish.

“Evil Dead: The Musical,” Iowa Western Community College’s monster mash-up that completes its run on Saturday, Nov. 21, turns the stupid into the sublime and the insipid into the ingenious in this high camp gore-fest based on the Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell cult film franchise launched in 1981.

The intentionally hammy Martin Scott Marchitto-directed rock musical finds a group of hormone-addled teens in the woods who discover that … oh, never mind … just insert here the schlocky terror template of your choice from any slasher film you have ever seen, add a hint of dusty, dark-side mysticism, throw in a kick line of butt-grabbing, hip-shaking trees and blend thoroughly.

There are plenty of favorite moments to choose from while the chainsaw does its dirty work, the body count rises, and the stage is littered with sundry body parts.

“You’ll all be dead by dawn,” we’re told by Cheryl (a great turn by Lauren Koll of Baby D’s “Devil Sedan”) as she shimmy-shimmy-shakes her way through “Look Who’s Evil Now.” Our pun-laden S-Mart employee, Ash (Alex Bridgman of the Witching Hour’s “2012”), gets his velvety moment in the spotlight with the (prematurely) triumphal, blood-splattered  “It’s Time.” The hilarious Daniel Grant-Holler plays it to the hilt in the role of “Good Old Reliable Jake,” a creepy rube-in-the-woods who thinks he can guide the kids to safety. And just wait until you get a load of the big, big pipes of Jacque Stanfield belting out her lamentation that “All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons.”

Jennifer Pool’s vibrantly cartoonish costumes are topped by an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink assortment of zany wigs. Evoking a claymation-meets-Scooby Doo look and feel, Pool has crafted wildly imaginative tresses, most notably a towering coif fashioned from stiffened plant fronds. Carl Dumicich’s set design, one populated by a footbridge with a mind of its own and an animatronic moose head trophy that has a thing or two to say about our hapless victims, adds the perfect fog-shrouded touch to the eerie happenings in cabin Number 36.

Then there’s Jason DeLong’s strobe-lit, seizure-inducing choreography. If you were lucky enough to see what DeLong did with a bunch of mere tykes in the Chanticleer’s “Annie Warbucks,” just wait until you see his stuff with the older, decidedly athletic hoofers of “Evil Dead: The Musical.” That’s the otherwise unrecognizable dance master himself front and center in the green face paint and Michael Jackson “Thriller” gear in the frenzied “Do the Necronomicon.” 

Like many college productions, you’re likely to encounter a bit of wooden acting here, a spot of colliding-into-each-other clumsiness there, but that can’t stop a youthful, energetic cast from having you in toe-tapping stitches regardless of occasional stumbles that go bump in the night.