'Evil Dead The Musical': Jokes and blood flow as horror-movie play makes its Memphis debut

You know those "mop boys" who run onto the court during a basketball game to soak up the sweat left behind by a player who skidded across the floor while diving for a loose ball or who was knocked to the deck in the fight for a rebound?

Something similar happens during "Evil Dead The Musical," onstage through Nov. 13 at TheatreWorks in Overton Square. Except the crew that rushes the floor is dressed in demon masks, and the liquid they absorb with their mops and towels is red, sticky and gruesome.

Yes, it's blood — stage blood, and patrons who choose to sit in the not just designated but coveted "splash zone" seats during "Evil Dead The Musical" will eventually find themselves resembling an unusually crimson-hued Jackson Pollock canvas.

"By the end of the final act, everybody in the first three rows is splattered with blood," said Ann Marie Hall, the longtime Memphis theater veteran who is the director of the play.

"It's in my mouth, it's in my ear," confirmed Kathy Jacobson, who sat in the front row during an Oct. 27 preview performance.

Jacobson said she intentionally wore a white sweatshirt to the show, with "a dual purpose. This is actually part of my Halloween costume. We're doing 'The Purge.' I want people to ask, 'What happened to that girl?'"

Apparently, learning first-hand why modern horror movies are sometimes called "splatter films" is an enticement to theatergoers. "Splash zone" tickets (which include an "Evil Dead" T-shirt) are $5 more than tickets in the upper three rows, and are selling out faster than their drier counterparts, Hall said.

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From cult horror movie to stage production

Adapted from director Sam Raimi's cult 1981 horror movie, "The Evil Dead," "Evil Dead The Musical" made its off-Broadway debut in 2006. With book and lyrics by Comedy Central scribe George Reinblatt, the play follows in the campy, gory, jokey wake of such productions as "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and — especially — "The Little Shop of Horrors," which also took its inspiration from a low-budget cult film.

For its Memphis debut, "Evil Dead The Musical" is presented at TheatreWorks by Memphis' not-for-profit New Moon Theatre Company, which specializes in what board member/stage manager Mystie Watson calls "the different, the weird."

Before a recent performance, Watson proudly showed off the cabin-in-the-woods set, the behind-the-scenes puppetry, the blood spray guns and the props (some created by local effects artist Duane P. Craig) necessary to bring crazy life to a stage version of Raimi's story of five college students who become possessed by cackling ancient demons while on spring break in the backwoods of Tennessee.

Fans of the "Evil Dead" trilogy (the musical incorporates elements of the 1987 and 1992 sequels) will recognize some props as if they were old friends. The reel-to-reel tape recorder that plays demonic invocations is on a table; nearby is what Hall calls "the infamous chainsaw" — the tool responsible for the most outrageously fountainous bloodletting.

Comical-looking animal heads are mounted on the cabin walls; eventually, they come to supernatural life, due to "Kandarian demons" (in the story) and puppeteers (backstage, behind the walls).

Other key props include the severed hand of Ash, the story's hero (played by Bruce Campbell in the movies and in the spinoff TV series), and the demon-summoning Book of the Dead, the Necronomicon, which is said to be bound in human skin and inked in blood. In fact, Watson made the book's cover by brushing liquid latex onto fabric, "so it feels like flesh."

The cast includes several "fake Shemps" — Raimi's term for, essentially, body doubles, inspired by the increasing use of doubles for Shemp Howard in Three Stooges shorts of the 1950s.

One of the fake Shemps is actor Hunter Steele, who before a recent performance emerged from backstage, wearing a sort of harness that made it appear as if he had been beheaded.

Asked his part in the play, he said: "I'm a tree, a beaver, a fake Shemp." (The trees in the woods menace the characters, while the beaver is one of the puppety stuffed animals in the cabin.) He explained that in his headless costume he represents the impossibly ambulatory body of co-star Yasemin Aksel, who in the story is beheaded; after which, Aksel positions herself behind some furniture so she appears to be a decapitated but still talking head. "Her head is going to still be out there," he said. "I'm just her body."

Blood + song and dance

Of course, "Evil Dead The Musical," unlike the Raimi films, pulses with not just blood but song and dance (Susan Brindley is the New Moon production's musical director, while Whitney Branan is "movement director"). The song titles tell the tale: "Book of the Dead," "Join Us" ("Don't you want to join the crew/ You'll be dead and evil, too"), "Look Who's Evil Now," "Do the Necronomicon" (a would-be dance craze) and "All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Kandarian Demons," to name a few.

"I had to cast legit singers — people who could belt," Hall said. "It's not Sondheim, but it's not easy to sing." (It's also not exactly what used to be called "clean": The lyrics contain profanity and sexual innuendo, which, combined with the gore, explains why the New Moon website cautions that the musical is "not recommended for those under 17.")

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Bruce Huffman, who has the lead role of Ash, pointed out that some sequences in the original films contain their own surreal choreography. In "Evil Dead The Musical," Huffman recreates the famous movie scene in which Bruce Campbell battles his own demon-possessed hand, which Ash eventually severs from his wrist. To prepare for the role, Huffman watched videos he made of himself practicing flips and other moves, to determine how best to sell the audience on the idea that he was being slapped, eye-poked and tossed around by his own mitt.

"The trick to making it work is to totally believe what you're doing," Huffman said. "Just to tell the truth" — even if that "truth" ends with what Ash calls a "ravenous demon-killing spree" that requires hidden stagehands to aim arterial sprays of blood into the audience.

"We try to be controlled with the chaos, so that's a challenge," said Gene Elliott, New Moon artistic director.

Hall agreed with Huffman that "truth" is key to even a story about interdimensional demons.

"I've directed some of the most ridiculous things on Earth, but you've got to find the heart," she said (speaking metaphorically, and not recommending the shortcut method of a Kandarian dagger to the chest).

"Comedy is the juxtaposition of absurdity and reality, coming together," she said. "So you've got to make the audience want to believe in what they're seeing, even when they know it's absurd."

New Moon Theatre Company presents 'Evil Dead The Musical'

7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 28-Nov. 13.

TheatreWorks, 2085 Monroe at Overton Square.

Tickets: $26-$36.50. For tickets and more information, visit newmoontheatre.org.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: 'Evil Dead The Musical': Horror movie comes to life on Memphis stage