SOUND OFF Special Edition: Little Shop Of Horrors! 10 Devilish & Demonic Plays & Musicals To Devour

By: Apr. 22, 2015
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While Broadway is heaven for theatergoers around the world, especially when the season reaches its fever pitch as it is right now, it can also be hell in the right hand, too. And, that's actually a good thing. As the exceedingly well-received new play HAND TO GOD that opened earlier this month proves, audiences adore a good scare - particularly when it is supported by a rich and dynamic dramatic basis upon which the horror-show can play out, which HAND TO GOD undoubtedly has in spades (and pitchforks). Needless to say, many of the most popular and successful musicals of all time have also dealt with a demonic presence - even if in the case of Broadway's two biggest hits, they are misunderstood monsters being depicted. Indeed, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA remains the longest-running show in Broadway history, approaching its 20th year on the Great White Way, while Oz-themed witch-centric musical mega-hit WICKED still is one of the hottest tickets in town, more than 10 years into its run. Given this week's hot news of Hollywood heartthrob Jake Gyllenhaal starring in an upcoming Encores! special limited-run production of cult hit and famous Off-Broadway mainstay LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS - not to mention the big announcement of a brand new small screen version of the ultimate cult movie musical, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, being revived for a new generation next year - it seems more than merely appropriate to now turn our attention to the scariest, bloodiest and best horror-themed musicals to date.

1. HAND TO GOD. The new Robert Askins drama is rife with comedy and dense in drama, but also showcases a spectacular star turn at its core by the breathtaking Steven Boyer. Never have puppets been so menacing, nor a church schoolroom so outright fear-inducing - devilish dolls, 666 pentagrams and copious sacrilege included. Plus, the first few rows of the audience should receive raincoats given the preponderance of Act 2 plasma-spilling. Scary good.

2. THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. Glam, grand and gruesome, the tale of two Denton, OH paramours and their weird, wild and totally unplanned experience at an alien-inhabited castle holding a convention in celebration of a newly-created proto-Frankenstein is as outlandish as musicals come - and as awesome, too. Equal parts David Bowie and Hammer Horror, ROCKY HORROR makes the darkest parts of the night an absolute pleasure to experience. Now, everybody wants to see what's on the slab for the remake.

3. LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Campy comedy and an ingratiating 50s-themed Alan Menken/Howard Ashman score make LITTLE SHOP a staple of community theaters around the country, while its original decade-long Off-Broadway run is legendary. Plus, there is the pristine feature film adaptation - though the revised ending is a sore spot with diehard fans. Thankfully, the original monster movie capper of all cappers with the plants taking over the planet is restored on the Blu-ray special edition. The question of the moment remains for the upcoming revival, though: does Jake have what it takes? We'll get our taste soon enough.

4. WICKED. Without a doubt, THE WIZARD OF OZ is one of the most recognizable and cherished of all modern cultural touchstones, so when Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman set out to adapt Gregory Maguire's inventive reworking of the origin stories of the witches so imperative to the tale - especially the most fantastic and scary aspects of it - into a musical, speculators scoffed and shrugged. As its success has proved, the limits of WICKED's reach are, in a word, unlimited. As is the amount of green it accrues, week in and week out - in more ways than one.

5. DAMN YANKEES. The devil never looked so dashing and debonair as he does in this classic Golden Age musical. Plus, do showstoppers get anymore devilishly delectable as "Two Lost Souls", let alone "Whatever Lola Wants" and "You Gotta Have Heart?" To add to it all, later this month we will be talking to the recognizable headliner of the famed 1990s Jerry Zaks-directed revival, the one and only Victor Garber, who also happened to star in the original production of the next title on our super-scary list.

6. SWEENEY TODD. A masterpiece beyond virtually any measure, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is as bloody and brilliant as musical theatre gets. The fact that the piece is performed in opera houses around the world - including the current Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel-led ENO concert production - is a further credit to the prestige afforded to the dark drama with more than its fill of high (and low) comedy. A rich meal - but, if you're wise, just don't ask for an ingredient list.

7. CARRIE. Internationally celebrated horror meister Stephen King's first novel provided fodder for an early cinematic hit under the direction of auteur Brian De Palma back in the 1970s, yet it seems that every successive revisiting of the material since then has been less effective - in both function and entertainment value; look no further than last year's underperforming movie remake for proof of that. With the forthcoming stage adaptation of King's MISERY poised for a debut next season, perhaps yet another revisiting of the sensationally scored but logistically troubled musical version will be scared up - or down.

8. THE EXORCIST. Adapting William Peter Blatty's vaguely historically-based tome to the big screen yielded Academy Award attention back in the 1970s, but noted Tony Award-winning director John Doyle's 2012 stage version of the novel and film as seen at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles failed to engender the same buzz. Although it has not made it to Broadway yet, one imagines the property remains popular enough to allow an enterprising producer to bring it in anyway someday. Whatever the result, it will surely be head-turning.

9. DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES. Although "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" may forever remain one of the most eerie and haunting pop masterpieces of all time, the Michael Crawford-led Broadway iteration of international super-smash TANZ DER VAMPIRE remains one of the Great White Way's biggest financial flops. Nevertheless, the European version is still packing them in - original director Roman Polanski recently helmed a Paris staging of the horror, drama, comedy and romance-flecked show, which proves the paradigm of the French not flocking to musicals largely incorrect. No matter the trappings of the physical production, the rhapsodic Jim Steinman score always takes wing, no matter the language.

10. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. The biggest Broadway hit of the 1980s and 1990s, PHANTOM is still running strong on Broadway, in the West End and far beyond decades after its premiere - a true credit to the masterful mix of horror, drama and romance conjured up by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Hal Prince and their collaborators. The music of the night may be sonorous, but the phantom is truly terrifying, at times, too - certainly, his shocking, skull-brandishing appearance (and disappearance) in "Masquerade" remains one of the great coup de theatre moments of the modern age. Demons, angels, divas - PHANTOM has it all.


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