The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
‘Cannibal! The Musical’ at Blank Canvas not for the thin-skinned
Cleveland production of early Trey Parker comedy gets chewed up
Picasso painted “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” at the age of 26. Dalí completed “The Persistence of Memory” by 27. Michelangelo unveiled a completed “David” when 29.
So it is tempting to expect more from 24-year-old Trey Parker’s “Cannibal! The Musical,” since he would later go on to write the Tony Awardwinning “The Book of Mormon.”
But “Cannibal!” — ever-so loosely based on the true story of an 1870s Gold Rush travel guide who left his clients dead and partially consumed in the Colorado Territory — is no early masterpiece. It has all of “Mormon’s” distinctively sophomoric humor, sacrilege and political incorrectness but none of the astute satire, tune- ful songs and endearing characters that made that show so hugely enter- taining.
To borrow the key lyric from the second song of “Cannibal!,” the show is “stupid.”
As evidence, its opening song — a Rodgers and Hammerstein parody titled “It’s a Shpadoinkle Day” — compares life to a baked potato.
Other songs are merely serviceable, which grows tiresome. Nearly every scene ends with an abrupt blackout, which lacks imagination. And characters are broadly and badly drawn, not unlike the acerbic, animated “South Park” TV series that Parker would cocreate four years later.
As “South Park” demonstrated, stupid can be great fun when the intentionally low-budget aesthetics, blatant irreverence and gross-out humor are embraced, which the production of “Cannibal!” at Blank Canvas Theatre in Cleveland does.
Director and special effects/scenic/lighting/sound designer Patrick Ciamacco has created the ideal oneset-fits-all environment for this show, complete with a faux-mountain pass and a splatter zone in the first row of seating for the frequently flying bodily fluids that explode from the stage.
Patrons who like their entertainment in their face, outside the box and all over their clothes are in for a treat.
For those who do not, the show needs to be impeccably executed for it to be remotely entertaining. Tongues, when not extracted and consumed, need to be firmly planted in cheeks, comic timing needs to be prompt and precise and lowbrow song-anddance (choreography by Zac Hudak) needs to be performed at a high level of competence to create the desired juxtaposition.
Not all these boxes are checked in this production, which is populated by performers of varying skill and accompanied by a solid but understaffed band under Matt Dolan’s direction.
Stephen Berg, Antonio DeJesus, David Turner, Danny Simpson and Joe Kenderes are fun as the very odd assortment of miners who embark on and are eaten during the illfated expedition from Utah to Colorado. But only Kenderes and Noah Hrbek, as travel guide Alferd Packer, come across as appropriately sincere in their silliness, while Turner’s rendition of “Let’s Build a Snowman,” sung while hallucinating from starvation, is a highlight.
Logan Honsaker — as Frenchy Cabazon, one of three nasty fur trappers — holds his own, as well. And, like Meg Martinez, as the reporter who is chronicling Packer’s adventure, he comes equipped with a fine singing voice.
Venchise Phillips, as Packer’s noble steed, Liane, manages to charm without uttering a single word and while somehow maintaining her dignity.
Neither the play nor the production match like-minded stagings of “Evil Dead: The Musical” at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood or Blank Canvas’ own renditions of “Urinetown” and “Bat Boy.” But if you are so inclined, sit back, leave your high expectations at the door, and enjoy the inanity.
Come hungry for schoolyard humor with a side of Utah miner.