SFist Goes To See: Re-Animator of the Dead: The Tale of Herbert West
Full Disclosure: Any last scraps of journalistic "integrity" regarding this show were swept away when we saw that our earlier interview with The Primitive Screwheads excerpted in the program for Re-Animator of the Dead: The Tale of Herbert West. Our first blurb! Look out, David Manning!
Going to see a Primitive Screwheads show at the Off-Market Theater is always weird -- you wait in one room, are ushered into an elevator, and eventually enter the theater itself. The theater is covered in plastic, as you are warned, again and again, that the audience isn't safe from the onstage carnage. We'd planned ahead by wearing black...oh, wait, we always wear black. But that seems apropos for Re-Animator of the Dead: The Tale of Herbert West, a staged production based firmly in the source materials of both Lovecraft and recent popular adaptions of his work.
The story is simple: oddball medical student Herbert West (played by Kun Shin with a witty slam against the stereotype of the socially inept Asian physician) and his roommate and fellow student James Whale (Danny Acree at his wide-eyed best) have discovered a serum that reanimates dead tissue, with invariably catastrophic results. It seems that dead things are pretty cranky when you wake them back up, but Whale and West persist, reanimating pretty much anything dead that crosses their paths.
Co-director and writer Sean Madeira does a pretty graceful job of merging the source texts with self and pop culture referential jokes to create a single work. That said, as audience members on opening night, it's clear that the show is still evolving -- but that was half the fun, as this seasoned ensemble works so well together that seeing their improvised responses to glitches packed as much hilarity as the intentional gags.
The source material and intentionally over-the-top acting all takes a back seat to the Grand Guignol gore of the show. Every violent confrontation (and there are plenty) is punctuated by hoses and buckets of blood, much of which is tossed over the plastic-draped audience (note: yes, you do get hit with less blood if you sit in the back row, but then you have to deal with all the pussy-ass folks in front of you raising their plastic to block the spray and obscuring your vision in the process. Our advice: sit towards the middle and wear a black t-shirt and quit your whining) to their delight.
Other stand-out performances were the frighteningly realistic portrayal of med-school Dean Halsey by Amber Kvietys, a sweet Vittoria Federico as the ingenue Elsa, the always-reliable Robert Selander (who also co-directed the production) as asshole talking head Colin Clive, and Chris Bowen as the tragically misunderstood metrosexual Fritz. We love watching these kids work together -- all of them play off one another like the cast of "Friends," except without making us want to kill them.
We look forward to seeing this show later in the run, as it continues to gel and some of the more manageable technical and pacing issues are dealt with. Right now, this show is solidly good, with flashes of greatness, but our previous experiences with the Screwheads make us certain that brilliance lies in wait. At its very worst, it's like the log ride at Great America, except with sex and blood and swearing, and at its best it's like adrenaline straight to the heart. Either way, it's a must for all genre fans who are up for geting a little messy.
Re-Animator of the Dead: The Tale of Herbert West
Runs until October 30 at the Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission
Buy tickets here, shows will sell out