“Evil Dead: The Musical” is a two-act retelling of the “Evil Dead” horror/comedy film franchise excluding the third film. And the best part this is the only musical with a blood splatter that hits the audience every time something violent happens. I will be spoiling quite a bit of the story so if you have never seen the films or plan on seeing the musical at some point I recommend looking away. In Evil Dead: The Musical, we follow Ash and his four friends as they spend the night at a cabin in the woods. The musical actually kicks off with a song about why 5 college students going to a cabin the woods is a bad idea; this song was a really funny and satirical of the “cabin in the woods” horror trope. The musical is full of satire on the horror genre and the Evil Dead franchise. this first song also introduced all 4 of Ash’s friends and established the dynamic for the running jokes between them.

Before the end of the first act, we are also introduced to Ed and his girlfriend. Ed actually isn’t actually that important of a character, but his girlfriend is. But oh boy, was Ed memorable, he had one of the best songs in the whole show called “bit part demon” I actually loved even the smallest side characters were extremely likable and had some of the best songs in the entire show.

Systematically every one of Ash’s friends is killed and turned into a Deadite in a bloody spectacle alongside show tunes. deadites are a unique depiction of demons that can only be killed by severing all of their limbs. The Deadites in the musical are quite different from the ones in the films, they rely on a very different form of psychological torture… puns. They torture Ash with awful, witty, beautiful puns. And these were always hilarious and had the audience laughing through the blood splatter.

All of the songs were written excellently and provided commentary on the current situation. The talented actors complimented the writing of the songs by singing loud and adding lots of emotion to what they were saying. It really surprised me how versatile every actor was in their performances. Especially the person who played Ash he really felt like the character and we later found out that he watched every movie and done plenty of research to accomplish such a feat.