Reefer Madness: the Musical @ Live Girls Theater
It's not so often you get to see a play as thoroughly pleasing as Reefer Madness: The Musical. Yes, we admit: we've bemoaned musical adaptations of movies in the past, and we could find plenty to complain about with this production (occasionally uneven cast, venue leaving something to be desired) if we tried, but really, that's all nitpicking. In sum total, this is the most recommendable and enjoyable piece of theater we've seen in Seattle in months, a hilarious musical that plays like a Family Guy parody of a musical in the first place, with enough cheesy lines, bawdy humor and exposed flesh to sate more or less any appetite.
Based on a 1930s exploitation flick (often erroneously thought of as an "educational" propaganda film, that element was really an excuse to get the pic past censors with the bursting bodices and lurid content intact), Reefer Madness was re-discovered by potheads in the Seventies and has since become a permanent component of pot culture and a classic cult flick. Like many cult flicks, it's basically unwatchable (unless you're high), but more or less everyone has seen it, or at least the high points: the cackling college student, the poorly acted hit-and-run, the murderous rage and beating murder.
The musical, by two TV-types, Dan Studney and Kevin Murphy, debuted in 1998 in LA and shortly thereafter became a Showtime movie. Much like a Simpson's musical parody, Reefer Madness: the Musical is a very knowing, self-conscious musical: the score is big, there's room for big dance numbers, so on and so forth. And what's amazing about the current production, by RK Productions at Live Girls Theater in Ballard, is how well it does all that bigness in an otherwise small space.
The show sticks close to the plot of the original: Robert Sherzer takes the stage as the principal of an American high school in the 1930s, to present a cautionary tale of the horrors of marijuana addiction on America's children. Jimmy Harper (Ryan McCabe) is a "well, gosh pop!"-type American teen out to impress his slightly ditzy girlfriend Mary Lane (Heather Gautschi). Desperate to learn to dance, he falls under the spell of local weed-fiend Jack (Tim Davidson), who likes to pick up unsuspecting kids at the soda fountain to get hooked on weed. Despite the protestations of his moll, Mae (Kate Jeager), who wants to spare the young 'uns her own weed-addicted fate, Jack leads Jimmy into a sordid world of racially miscegenated orgies and jazz music.
There's so much great stuff to say, it's hard to even figure out where to start. This is a show, after all, which cheekily posits that marijuana leads one to orgies, thievery, murder, rape, cannibalism and zombie-filled hallucinations, all brilliantly created in the otherwise tiny Live Girls space. McCabe did a spot-on job as a quintessential American teen, but Gautschi takes the cake by managing to keep in that airy, high-pitched voice for the entire show. As the all-purpose narrator, Sherzer is a terrific presence on stage, particularly when dressed in Luciferian regalia.
We also want to give a special shout-out to the choreographer, Hailey Hays. Hays makes excellent use of the limited space for big, old-fashioned style numbers, and that more than anything separates this show in terms of scale and ambition from the countless other fringe shows that appear in basement theaters every month here in town. And Hays' seductive duet as soda jerk gone bad was one of the high points of the show.
Live Girls Theater, 2220 NW Market St. // Thurs.-Sat 7:30 pm, with a second Sat. performance at 10:30 // tix $20 // thru March 22
