Get ready to do the Necronomicon!

One of the most anticipated shows of the year, Evil Dead The Musical opens at the Market Hall in downtown Peterborough on Wednesday, October 18th. Directed by Caitlin O’Connor and produced by Barb Mills, Evil Dead The Musical is the inaugural production of Peterborough’s newest theatre company, Killer Tree Productions, and is a perfect fun-filled Halloween favourite with four performances between October 18th and 20th.

Evil Dead The Musical is an unlikely Canadian theatre success story. Performed throughout the world, the show has amassed it own cult following which is as devoted to the stage show as to the original films that inspired it.

A musical comedy retelling of Sam Raimi’s classic horror films The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987) featuring Bruce Campbell as larger-than-life hero Ash Williams, the stage show was originally developed as a class project by four Queen’s University theatre students (Christopher Bond, Frank Cipolla, Melissa Morris, and George Reinblatt) who brought the show at the Randolph Theatre in 2003.

After a sellout success of its initial run, the show made headlines a year later when it became a festival favourite at the Montreal Comedy Festival. Due to its outstanding success, Evil Dead The Musical found a home off-Broadway in New York City in 2006, sealing its place in musical theatre canon, with the show’s popularity growing as theatre companies throughout the world have embraced this offbeat but beloved production.

Anybody who has seen the Evil Dead films knows the story, and the musical doesn’t stray very far from its source material. Five college students — Ash Williams (Andrew Little), his girlfriend Linda (Caitlin O’Connor), best friend Scotty (Lance Issacs), party girl Cheryl (Carly Evans), and Ash’s dorky sister Shelly (Lindsay Barr) — go for a spring break trip to an isolated cabin in the woods.

Upon arrival, the group discover a tape recorder owned by the cabin’s missing inhabitant, Professor Knosby. When they play the tape, they hear Knosby reciting passages from the fabled Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (a.k.a. “The Book of the Dead”). The incantations open up a floodgate of evil and what was supposed to be a fun holiday filled with friendship, togetherness, and premarital sex turns into a fight for survival as Ash and his friend’s battle for their souls against a Deadite army of Kandarian demons.

Meanwhile, in a plot ripped out of Evil Dead II, Professor Knosby’s daughter Annie (Meisha Browne) and her fiancé Ed (Addison Wylie) hire woodsy hillbilly Jake (Brandon Remmelgas) to lead them through the dark words filled with killer trees to the cursed cabin in search for Annie’s missing father — not realizing the eternal battle between good and evil already taking place at their destination.

Evil Dead The Musical is a show filled with everything: music, romance, comedy, good times, and Deadite bloodshed. Killing demons has never sounded this good!

The fun thing about Evil Dead The Musical is that it is not only a send up of horror films and the Evil Dead movies, but musical theatre as well. Audiences don’t go to this musical expecting to see something of the calibre of Hamilton or Les Misérables. Evil Dead The Musical doesn’t try to be anything except what it is: a campy and over-the-top show filled with stupid puns and silly sight gags that pokes fun at its own ridiculousness. The whole thing is a giant joke that both the actors and the audience are in on.

With the exception of a handful of actors, most of Killer Tree Production’s cast of Evil Dead The Musical is made up of performers who are well-seasoned musicians performing musical theatre for the first time.

It is great to see some new faces in the cast, and not a cast made up of the usual suspects but, as a result, Evil Dead The Musical isn’t as polished as some of the larger Peterborough musicals jam packed with performers who have been doing musical theatre for years. Personally, I enjoyed the rawness of the performances, and the more seasoned actors truly support the others on stage. The comraderie of the cast is very evident, adding to the likeability of the production.

Andrew Little has huge shoes to fill in playing the iconic role of Ash, but he manages to walk the fine tightrope of creating homage to Bruce Campbell without doing an impersonation.

Andrew truly understands the role of Ash and plays him with tons of bravado and with his tongue firmly stuck in his cheek. Ash Williams is a perfect role for Andrew, and he brings a true sense of fun to the role. While he’s the star of the show, Andrew is a giving actor who allows the performers around him to have their individual moments. Whether he is fighting with his own demon-possessed hand, arguing with a crocheted moose head, or decapitating demons, Andrew is a lot of fun to watch.

However, the break-out star of the show is definitely Lindsay Barr as Ash’s sister Cheryl. Making her acting debut, the popular Peterborough musician steals every scene. Lindsay has great comedic timing, first as a prudish and dorky kid sister with a slurpy lisp, and then as a creepy possessed pun-sprouting demon that taunts Ash and company with some of the silliest lines of the night. Lindsay is simultaneously terrifying and hilarious and a total delight to watch. As someone who knows how to already work an audience, she has taken this ability and applied it to what will hopefully become a continuing acting career. Her performance is a blast.

One of the things that really make Evil Dead The Musical work are the memorable songs written for the show. With such great songs such as “Cabin in the Woods”, “Housewares Employee”, “What the Fuck Was That?”, “Bit-Part Demon”, and the show-stopping “Do the Necronomicon”, the music is surprisingly singable. With a great band led by Ryan Browne and the cast filled with seasoned musicians and singers, Evil Dead The Musical is strongest when the performers are singing, and its musical numbers are truly entertaining.

The musical moment of the show goes to Brandon Remmelgas’ performance of “Good Old Reliable Jake”. I’m not sure if Brandon was allowed to just do his own choreography for the number, but it’s a great bit that is really a lot of fun. Brandon also teams up with Andrew to back up Meisha Browne’s equally strong number “All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Kandarian Demons”. While every musical number in the show has an entertaining moment, these two are easily the best of the night.

The thing to remember about Evil Dead The Musical is that it is exactly what you think it is. Is it the best musical you’re going to see this year? Possibly not. But is it going to be the funnest? Most likely yes.

If you don’t think that Evil Dead The Musical is going to be your thing, then it probably isn’t. But it is the perfect show for people who may not go to traditional musicals: people who love horror, racy humour, foul language, ridiculous comedy, and tons of gore. It might not be for everybody, but it’s ideal for anybody looking for a fun way to celebrate the Halloween season.

Caitlin O’Connor and her company have really made their mark on Peterborough with Evil Dead The Musical. I look forward to see what off-beat production they bring to the Market Hall next. Peterborough’s theatre scene has a lot of room for more unconventional productions like this one.

Just a note of caution about the show’s self-described “splatter zone”, one of the key features of Evil Dead The Musical. As Ash and friends battle the Deadites, stage blood and guts soak the audience members in the first few rows. Audience members who come to the show traditionally dress in white so they can wear the “blood” like a badge after leaving the theatre. For those who delight in this sort of spectacle, it’s a great feature of the show which is tons of fun. But audience members who would much rather avoid being splattered with stage blood will want to get a seat further back from the stage. Otherwise, be sure to dress accordingly and be prepared for the possibility of being doused in demon blood.

Evil Dead The Musical runs for four performances from October 18th to 20th at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St. E, Peterborough). Shows start at 8 p.m., with a special midnight performance on Friday, October 20th. Advance tickets are $23 general admission ($28 at the door), $18 for students, and $33 for seats in the “splatter zone” (see caution above).

When Igor Stravinsky’s orchestral ballet “The Rite of Spring” premiered in Paris in 1913, it was so ahead of its time that it created scandal and provoked a near-riot in the audience.

Don’t expect either a scandal or a near-riot this Thursday and Friday when Public Energy presents “Nogojiwanong Rite of Spring”, but you can certainly expect something equally unique.

The free outdoor dance performance, choreographed by performance artist Brian Solomon, will bring together more than 20 members of the local community along with professional dance artists, for an Indigenous re-imagining of Stravinsky’s notorious ballet. There are two performances of “Nogojiwanong Rite of Spring”, one on Thursday, October 19th and one on Friday, October 20th, and both begin at 6 p.m.

And what makes “Nogojiwanong Rite of Spring” even more special is that it takes place at a little-known Anishinaabe burial site in downtown Peterborough, near the Brock Street parking lot.

Solomon, who is of Anishinaabe and Irish descent, is a graduate of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and holds an MA of performance from the Laban Centre in the U.K. Nominated for multiple Gemini and Dora Awards, Solomon has presented his works across Canada, Berlin, Ingolstadt, Bamberg, Amsterdam, and London U.K. He has also taught for several arts institutions and companies, including one of Europe’s foremost universities for acting, H.F.S. Ernst Busch (Berlin).

For the past six weeks, Solomon has been artist in residence at Public Energy in partnership with Trent University. During that time, he has been leading workshops for local community organizations (including Nogojiwanong Friendship Centre, YES Shelter for Youth and Families, LOFT Downtown Youth Space, and New Canadians Centre) and, through the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies, giving workshops for Trent University students.

He has also been working with more than 20 members of the community — ranging in age from three to over 70 years old — to develop the choreography of “Nogojiwanong Rite of Spring”, with space for weekly workshops and rehearsals being donated by Artspace and Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies.

“It’s very unique to have a dance artist come and spend six weeks in the community developing a performance like this,” says Public Energy’s performance curator Victoria Mohr-Blakeney. “Brian has such a gentle and open teaching style. It really makes people feel comfortable and helps them get into their bodies.”

For his part, Solomon says he’s “passionate about community-engaged arts and helping people relearn about their forgotten bodies, and take back the space those bodies occupy.”

In addition to members of the community, Solomon has also been working with dance artists Mariana Meinke and Whitney Hewitt as well as other performance professionals who will perform in “Nogojiwanong Rite of Spring”.

As for the performance itself, it takes place in the area of the Brock Street Parking Lot, on Brock Street near George Street in downtown Peterborough — on the site of an Anishinaabe burial site.

Through “Nogojiwanong Rite of Spring”, Solomon hopes to both raise awareness about the significance of the site and to honour the site, creating an opportunity to build knowledge and understanding around the history and significance of this place.

The performance will re-envision Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” through a contemporary Indigenous lens, with Stravinsky’s score re-imagined and performed by Melody McKiver (a Two-Spirit Anishinaabe violist, composer, powwow dancer and media artist and member of Obishikokaang Lac Seul First Nation in the Treaty #3 territories in Sioux Lookout).

“The Rite of Spring” is a ballet and orchestral concert choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and composed by Stravinsky, who was virtually unknown at the time, for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company. When it premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on May 29, 1913, its avant-garde music and choreography provoked outrage and a near-riot in the audience.

It is now widely considered to be one of the most seminal musical works of the 20th century, influencing jazz, miminalism, and other contemporary movements.

This is not the first time Solomon has staged a community dance re-interpreting “The Rite of Spring”. In 2013, he mounted a similar production, called “South London’s Rite of Spring”, in London, U.K. — on the centenary of the London premiere of the original “The Rite of Spring”.

“I felt that this primordial piece really demanded a cast of all ages and abilities to create a fuller atmosphere for the brutal story of death and sacrifice,” Solomon said of the London performance.

“By bringing together professionals and members of the local community with no prior experience to train together, we have been able to generate something much more powerful and strikingly real.”

Next week, Port Hope’s Ontario Street Theatre — in conjunction with Parry Riposte Productions — is bringing something special to four small communities in the Kawarthas and eastern Ontario.

From October 18th to 21st, producer Sean Carthew is presenting the award-winning one-woman show The Elephant Girls on a four-stop tour in Millbrook, Cobourg, Warkworth, and Bloomfield. Directed by Mary Ellis and written and performed by Margo MacDonald, The Elephant Girls explores the history of The Forty Elephants (also known as The Forty Thieves), a real-life all-female crime syndicate that terrorized London UK for over a century.

Making its debut at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in 2015, The Elephant Girls has been a major theatrical success for Margo MacDonald since the moment it hit the stage. Selling out its initial run, and held over for three additional performances, the show won all the top awards for the festival, and went on to sweep all the categories in Ottawa’s Rideau Awards later that year.

Margo has been touring the show across Canada ever since. In 2016 Margo brought The Elephant Girls to Europe, where it played for a month at the prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland.

The show proved so popular that she brought it back to Europe earlier this year, where she staged the show for three weeks in the Elephant and Castle District where the Forty Elephants gang operated.

The show also was featured in the International Dubbin Gay Theatre Festival and at the Rialto Theatre in Brighton, England. After its four-performance run in the Kawarthas, The Elephant Girls will be returning to Toronto as part of the One More Night Festival.

“I have been following The Elephant Girls for two years at least,” says Sean Carthew, who originally founded Ontario Street Theatre as a theatre space in Port Hope and has since converted it into a pop-up theatre company that stages shows across in various locations across the Kawarthas.

“As soon as I saw what the play was about I knew I had to get it here,” he continues. “How does no one know about an all-women’s gang that terrorized London for over one hundred years?

“It comes down to the story. It’s interesting, intriguing and enlightening. Throw in one hell of a performance from the playwright herself and it’s a done deal. Plus Margo herself is endearing, strong, talented and down-to-earth and she is brave enough to try a four small-town tour.”

VIDEO: “The Elephant Girls” Trailer

Margo MacDonald first learned of the not-so-infamous gang from a mention on social media, and turned into a passion project that has paid off for the Toronto-based performer.

“I stumbled across a mention of The Forty Elephants on Facebook,” Margo recalls. “I was reading a post and someone had commented, ‘Yes, but have you heard of The Forty Elephants? They were a real-life all-female gang in Victorian England.’

“I immediately became intrigued and, after a bit of googling, realized the gang had been more or less forgotten about and was only recently brought back to light in a book written by Brian McDonald called The Gangs of London. I decided pretty quickly I wanted to write about them, to share their story and to explore more about what made them work.

“They started out as the women’s branch of the Elephant and Castle gang, or The Elephant Boys, in London, England. They were the wives, daughters, and sisters of the male gang members and operated as thieves for the gang. Some sources say they go back as far as the 1700s but the first mention of the Elephant Girls, or the Forty Thieves as they were known at the time, in police records dates to the 1840s.

“They were around, terrorizing London shopkeepers, for over 100 years. They were at the height of their power under Queen Alice Diamond in the 1920s, but that is also when events took place which would lead to their downfall. This is the time period my play focuses on. The gang held on in a much diminished form until the 1950s, and then fizzled out into obscurity.”

But as Margo points out, due to their economic situation and social status at the time, for most women in the Elephant and Castle area, becoming an Elephant Girl seemed to be their best option for survival.

“Elephant and Castle was, and to some extent still is, one of the poorest and roughest areas of London,” Margo explains. “These women had very little to choose from in terms of how to survive. Becoming a member of the gang seemed like the best option to many of them. They mostly robbed high-class department stores of London’s excessively wealthy West End and felt it was their right to do so.

They mostly robbed high-class department stores of London’s excessively wealthy West End and felt it was their right to do so. They stole from the rich and gave to themselves.

“They stole from the rich and gave to themselves. The money they made when towards buying fancy clothes and living the party lifestyle — until they ran out of money and then they’d go out on the rampage again.”

In The Elephant Girls, Margo explores the story of the gang through her character named Maggie Hale.

“Maggie is a fictional character, but one whose story is made up of bits and pieces of various actual gang members’ lives and careers,” she says. “Most of the history and stories of the gang you hear in the show are based on what is on historical record about them.

“The fictional parts of the show are those which deal with the specific relationships between the women, the emotional through-line, the reasons behind why they did what they did.

“None of these women, unlike some of the male gangsters, wrote memoirs. All we have of their words are those recorded in police records, court transcripts, and reported in the newspapers. So I’ve had to use my imagination to put together the ‘whys’ of what they did in order to make the show dramatic and a piece of theatre, rather than a history lecture.

“But in researching my characters I looked not only to the past but also the present — it turns out the reasons why girls join gangs today are pretty much the same as they were a hundred years ago.”

Margo describes her character Maggie as an “enforcer” for the Elephant Girls. As Margo explains, the enforcers had a unique and dangerous role in the gang.

“There are newspaper articles which highlight the fact the gang had a handful of women who dressed as men, drove the getaway cars, and did all the dirty work. I found this to be one of the most interesting facts I came across and decided to tell the story from the point of view of one of these enforcers.

“They are the ones who would get their hands dirty, keep the girls in line, and warn off rival gangs or independent thieves who tried to operate in the gang’s territory.”

After winning theatrical awards across Ontario and being performed on two continents, the fact that The Elephant Girls will be performed in some smaller Ontario communities is a real treat. This is a part of Ontario Street Theatre’s mandate to bring first-rate theatre from the larger cities so smaller cities can enjoy critically acclaimed theatre.

“I think it is important to challenge audiences and offer something they may have not thought of going to see or had the opportunity to be able to go to,” says Sean. “Bringing indie, edgy shows to small towns works. Why should only bigger cities get to see this kind of show? The talent will come here, so let’s do it.

“When Margo said yes to coming here I felt very proud. Proud that I was going to be a part of bringing such great theatre to audiences that may have never had the chance to see something like this and proud that a talent like Margo wanted to work with me and follow my vision of a four small town tour. I am also proud of the response from all the towns. People are getting on board and going.”

Sean plans to continue bringing similar theatre to the Kawarthas in the same format of putting on four performances on four consecutive nights in four smaller towns. Currently, he is planning on presenting another production for the Christmas holidays.

“I really just hope that people are entertained,” Sean says. “Whether it’s the story, the history, the performance, subject matter, or just being great edgy theatre, this show will entertain you.”

The Elephant Girls will be performed on Wednesday, October 18th in Millbrook at a yet-to-be-disclosed location (email Sean at ontariostreettheatre@gmail.com for details); on Thursday, October 19th in Cobourg at The Concert Hall at Victoria Hall Concert Hall; on Friday, October 20th in Warkworth at the Warkworth Town Hall Centre for the Arts; and on Saturday, October 21st in Bloomfield at the Baxter Arts Centre.

The shows start at 8 p.m. and tickets are $25 (except for the Cobourg show, a fundraiser for the Art Gallery of Northumberland, where tickets are $35). For information on where to purchase tickets for each performance in person and online, visit the Ontario Street Theatre website at popupshows.ca or follow them on Facebook.

For more information on The Elephant Girls, visit the Parry Riposte Productions’ website at parryriposte.ca.e