Hail To The King Baby – A Night at the Evil Dead Musical

Late Friday night, Carrie, Philipp, Vero and I rolled into Toronto. After some meager directions brought to us by Mapquest, we got to Miguel and Katie’s place looking for a good time. The good time began when we decided to watch Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 in one sitting that night.

Let’s put this into perspective. It is already midnight when we arrive. I have been driving all the way there so I am little zonked. But we need to prepare ourselves for the onslaught tomorrow – the Evil Dead Musical!

People died off through Evil Dead 2 and I must admit that Philipp had to park my ass back down in the couch near the ending of Evil Dead 2 as I was ready for bed. We did manage to watch them both and went to bed victorious.

The next day we meandered around Toronto just doing little chores here and there – mainly looking for a nice white t-shirt to wear to the Evil Dead Musical.

Evil Dead is a movie which came out in 1981 and it follows a group of students who go to a cabin in the woods. Unfortunately, these woods are haunted and soon enough everyone becomes zombies. No worries – we have the lead character Ash (played by Bruce Campbell) who can take care of all his Deadite friends, along with the help of a sawed-off shotgun (his boomstick), a chainsaw on his hand and great facial expressions. Let’s not forget the great one-liners.

The movie spawned off two sequels (the second being more campier than the first, then the third being the campiest of all) and has had a cult following throughout the world.

Fast forward to 2003 when an Evil Dead Musical was created in Toronto and then moved to New York. In the past year we’ve been talking about maybe heading to New York City to see this spectacle but the stars aligned for us and it came back to Toronto for a bit.

Carrie managed to grab every Evil Dead fan she knows and we ended up having 15+ people go to the show. We started off the afternoon well with a great BBQ hosted by Miguel and Katie. The food was great, the company was great, weather was decent also. Let’s see…for archive purposes I’ll try and remember everyone that was there – Carrie, Philipp, Lucas, Andrew, Myself, Vero, Beth, Tom, Kris, Katie, Miguel, Adrianna, Tyler and Megan. Yeah, that’s about right.

We hopped into some cabs (as we figured we may miss the show taking the subway at the late hour) and arrived to the Diesel Playhouse. Outside the Playhouse I noticed a slew of people putting on their white t-shirts.

Why are wearing white t-shirts? Well, we managed to buy tickets inside the SPLATTER ZONE, where you most likely will get some blood on you (if you’re lucky!). That’s right, blood. Sure, it’s fake (or is it?) but I’m sure it’ll be a good time.

We walk into the playhouse and check out the merchandise ($60 for an autographed poster? No thanks!) and realize we can drink alcohol in the theatre! This isn’t your average musical! We head into the theatre (where I get berated by the ticket-taker lady for not listening) and we find ourselves taking up the entire second row centre! Excellent seats!

The musical starts and it’s a laugh-fest from that point on. The actors are amazing, the tunes are hilarious and the stage set up is well thought out. It is everything we needed it to be. Every funny part of the Evil Dead series is put into this musical and then some. (at this point I’m going to talk about specific scenes of the Evil Dead series so if you don’t know them, go watch them!) We have Ash chopping off his evil hand and while doing so a squirt of blood is coming out so he puts his face into the stream a few times just to get his face more bloody. We also have some great zombie costume ideas. The scene where the trees attack one of the women was amazingly thought out for the stage production – they had the girl running away with the three other actors dressed up as as trees and they run on the spot after her. Then she takes a tumble and they advance but she gets back up and they go backwards. Very cool scene.

Intermission hit and Tom proclaims that this is way better than he thought it would be. There is mad dash to find some ponchos as the blood hasn’t started spurting yet. Adrianna gets berated by one of the staff after asking for a poncho – “Why did you buy tickets for the Splatter Zone if you can’t handle it?!“. A guy eventually comes around with some ponchos. Vero told me afterwards that she was disappoitned she didn’t bring her own white t-shirt to the party. Next time, Vero. Next time.

The anticipation is high when the second half begins. I don’t know what to expect. Will it be a full on bloodbath? Does it depend on where we are sitting? I was sitting pretty well in the center of the row…what’s going to happen?

The musical continues and we see our first sign of blood. It spews out of the trapdoor on the stage floor onto the left splatter zone section. A tease really! You can already see the division in the splatter zone – those who love it and those who hate it. Another blood fest begins when a zombie takes a beer cup full of blood and throws it into the audience.

At this point I am thinking that it’s not that big of a deal and there is only a slim chance we will get hit by anything substantial.

Then it begins. Ash sings his way into Deadite killing mayhem. This part of the night is an entire blur to me as blood starts spewing out in full force on the left and right sides. I see friends of mine getting hit with the onslaught. Poor Beth loses a contact lens due to the blood hitting her eye! Kris looks like Carrie from Stephen King after getting a bucketful in the face. It is terror all around!

We’re starting to get some major spurts here and there. Andrew is one of those people who are hating the moment and you can hear him scream “No, NOOO!” when he gets some blood coming at him.

Then it happens. Ash rips a heart out of a zombie right in front of us which explodes into a gush of blood coming for us! I raise my arm in fear of losing my entire face to the onslaught of red stuff! I am soaked. I think I got the worst of the entire crew actually. Philipp was kind of disappinted with the amount he received and Carrie didn’t have any at all on her. I have no idea why I thought my shoes and jeans would be safe from this carnage, but it wasn’t. It was everywhere. Miguel said the blood that hit him had soaked through to his underwear.

As we sat in happiness of the moment, the musical quickly ended and we cheered and cheered again! This was an event not to be missed.

If you are not liking the idea of fake blood hitting you, then no worries. There are plenty of seats outside the Splatter Zone. I highly recommend this musical for anyone who will like a good cheesy comedy night. I enjoyed it so much that I want to go back again right now. If anything, I may be up for an annual trek (if it remains that long). Phantom of the Opera, eat your heart out.

After the musical, we headed to the Underground Garage which was an excellent rock bar. The place is plastered with polaroids, vintage rock n’ roll posters and bras hanging from the ceiling. We owned the dance floor and we had a most excellent night. Many fond memories, but my fave is this:

Carrie – Do you have any Timberlake? DJ – Lady, this is a rock bar!

Highlights of the Night:

• Carrie telling off some lady who was yelling at us for being too loud. It was justified – Carrie said “Sorry.” the first time but the lady just kept yelling at us. That’s not cool.
• Miguel passing out in the cab and waking up to give the cabbie the wrong directions home, then waking up later to wonder why the cabbie is going the wrong way.
• Philipp sleeping in the bathroom.
• The sheer awesome music which was being played. I love rock.

Thanks to Miguel and Katie for the excellent time in Toronto and special thanks goes out to Carrie for picking up those wonderful tickets.