Producer Joel Cochrane has been around the theatre racket long enough to know that just like in the movies, theatrical zombies never die — they just get remounted with a new cast.
“Can’t kill the zombies, man,” Cochrane says. “You can’t kill the killed!”
Returning for the first time since its 2009 run, this August revival has a new venue — the Pumphouse — new director and a new cast, including a brand-new Ash, the hero with the chainsaw hand.
This time around, he’s played by Bart Kwiatkowski, perhaps best-known among Calgary musical-lovers for his most recent role in Storybook Theatre’s production of Avenue Q, where he brandished a puppet on his hand instead of a chainsaw.
And if anyone can make that transition, it’s Kwiatkowski, says Storybook artistic director George Smith, who directed the actor in Avenue Q.
“I liken Bart to Calgary’s Jim Carrey,” Smith says. “He really is a chameleon. I’ve seen him do — not only good comedy — but good, tear-bringing drama. He’s highly versatile and easy to work with.”
While mid-August is an unusual time to produce a cult musical — or any play, for that matter — it’s actually beautiful timing when your lead moonlights as a Grade Six teacher.
“When I saw the (rehearsal and performance) times,” Kwiatkowski says, “I was like, ‘Wow — rehearse throughout the summer, open through the end of August,’ and there was no conflict,” Kwiatkowski says. “It was truly serendipity.”
Adding to the ideal timing was the fact that Evil Dead: The Musical was a project that had been on his radar for a while.
“I remember watching the movies in junior high,” he says, “and knowing all those iconic lines by heart. I was in maybe the 10th Grade, and I loved the movies, and many years ago, I took out the CD of the musical from the Calgary Public Library and I was just enamoured of it.
“When this opportunity to do it came up, to be Ash, I was just giddy ... because it is such an iconic part.”
Kwiatkowski is getting the opportunity to play Ash because of a small bit of good timing, namely the meeting of a ready-made production (the sets were built!) with a venue — the Pumphouse — that a while back, was about to shut its doors for a massive $12-million renovation.
What better way, thought Cochrane and Pumphouse producer Scott McTavish, to temporarily shutter the venue than by bringing back Evil Dead’s never-say-dead zombies and Ash for one last weekend fling?
Then, the Pumphouse scrapped the renovations.
“When the renovations fell through,” Cochrane says, “we still thought, ‘What the hell? Why not still do it? There’s no real reason not to.’ ”
Except for one big one: mid-August is not exactly theatre season.
“The (Calgary) Fringe is still on at that time,” Cochrane says. “There’s a bazillion (Evil Dead) fans (out there), who are not your typical September-to- May theatregoers. I mean — there’s lots of those, but there’s lots of others who will come see the show. And (so) we said, ‘Let’s do it (anyway).’ ”
After all, if the 2009 run — it launched at the end of May and was so popular it was extended several times, right through Stampede — is any indication, Evil Dead is one of those musicals that inspires an unusual amount of passion in its audience.
For Cochrane, a large part of the explanation for what fuels such audience passion for Evil Dead: The Musical lies with the character of Ash.
“It’s (Ash) the schleprock,” Cochrane says, “nerdball guy who ultimately just goes off on what should be a normal weekend with a little bit of sex, and a little bit of booze and things go absolutely haywire. How does a person deal with a world that transforms so radically?
“In a way,” he adds, “we have a world now that’s full of uncertainties, and wars and horrors — things just go on and you go, what the f..k? How do I fit? How do I work in this? How do I somehow get through it and survive?
“I think the fact that Ash somehow finds it in himself to rise above this — I think that’s actually kind of powerful. Not to go all kind of processy and Daniel Day Lewis on you — but ... there’s an element of that in the story that touches people.”
Either that, Cochrane adds, or the show is just good old-fashioned, hot August fun.
“Let’s face it,” he says. “It’s just a big, dumb, goofy fun story, right? What the hell. Why not? I have never, and will never, apologize for being entertaining and making people laugh and giving them their money’s worth.”
Hit & Myth Productions and The Pumphouse present Evil Dead: The Musical at the Pumphouse Theatres. Tickets and info: 403-263-0079 or pumphousetheatre.ca.
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