BRIEF: "Evil Dead" and "The Internationalist"

Evil Dead: The Musical is all the proof you'll ever need that I don't hate campy musicals. I just hate poorly done campy musicals (as with How I Found True Love and Saved the World...). Granted, I'm a fan of the franchise, but even without that, there's something unabashedly fun about getting covered in gore at a late-night performance that both mocks and embraces the Rocky Horror spirit. Dancing, raping trees, dinky footbridge sight-gags, and an ensemble cast that can sing well even after being dismembered--it's fantastic, and, believe it or not, is a heck of a lot funnier (though perhaps not bloodier) than last year's so-called farce The Lieutenant of Inishmore. The cabin's creepy set design and animatronics also garner some points for the production, as do the quick makeup changes and goofy ballads; this is a show worth sawing your own arm off for.

The Internationalist is closed now, again, and with it goes another opportunity to see a talented ensemble cast outperforming the flaws of its script. We aren't supposed to understand what the characters in this ficticious foreign country are saying, but the inability to comprehend our visiting American protagonist's Lost in Translation plot makes Anne Washburn's script like a thin and gauzy dance of the seven veils: both translucent and opaque, both seductive and frustrating, it's hard to pass judgement on. I will say that the set design--a Morrocan stucco of sorts, recessed far enough back in the stage that a portable office can sit in the center--did not sit well with me, reducing the show more to an art piece than a comedy. The lighting managed to balance some of the notes and tones lost in the rest of the production, as did the superb and crisp acting of the cast, but the conclusion left me both in search of the punchline and the punch.