TASTE TEST FOR MUSICAL
Cannibal cast rehearses at Capitol
There’s no accounting for taste — especially with human flesh in the hands of Trey Parker.
A Toronto theatre company has for the last week been quietly rehearsing at the Capitol Theatre before launching a U.S. tour of something as potentially offensive as it is funny: Cannibal! The Musical!
The show was originally made in 1993 as a cult dark-comedy film by Parker, the co-creator of South Park and the outrageous Book of Mormon stage play. Cannibal! The Musical! was later transformed into a theatrical production, including performances in Toronto for a record-setting three-week run at the Panasonic Theatre in 2015.
“It’s silly, irreverent humour,” Jessica Johnston, the stage show’s general manager and associate producer, said this week. “You don’t go long without laughing.”
Believe it or not, the show is based on actual events.
“It’s a tasty story,” Johnston said. “It’s about Alferd Packer, who was the only person in America convicted of cannibalism.”
Parker and some friends travelled to the Colorado Territory in 1873 to stake a claim in search of gold. But they got lost in the wintry mountains and, well, perhaps food was a little scarce.
Cannibal! The Musical! tells the tale through a subsequent court case and flashbacks. And if a sneak preview of one scene this week indicates anything, nothing is safe from humour with this spectacle. Yet the singing and sets are all classic musical.
But why does Starvox Entertainment, the Toronto company bringing cannibalism to the stage with song and dance, want to fine-tune its show for a week in Windsor?
“This is a pretty big venue, stagewise,” Johnston said. “And it’s available. It’s really hard to find spaces this big that are available in Toronto. And taking a show and making sure everything works before we hit the road can be very expensive in Toronto.”
The show heads for a week in Madison, Wis., then on to Nashville, though Johnston hopes to add more stops on the tour as word gets out.
It’s an all-new cast from 2015, but the show’s director, Christopher Bond, was the one who originally adapted the film script to make it work for a Toronto stage.
“He took the script and jazzed it up a little bit,” Johnston said. “And we went from there.”
Johnston considers the tale irresistible. It has surfaced in pop culture from comic books to music. The University of Colorado Boulder even named a cafeteria the Alferd G. Packer Memorial Grill, with the slogan “Have a friend for lunch!”
Possible good news for Windsor audiences is that Cannibal! The Musical! may be on the Capitol Theatre’s menu for the weekend, with free dress rehearsals open to audiences. Check the Capitol’s website Capitoltheatrewindsor.ca for last-minute announcements.