All boundaries go up in smoke and hilarity is high at the Seattle Premiere of the new “hit” musical: REEFER MADNESS!
The year is 1936: FDR is in the White House, Duke Ellington is playing the Jazz Clubs; Gone with the Wind sits on everyone’s nightstand and Our Gang plays on the goggle box. The unsuspecting nation sleeps easy while a leafy green assassin lurks in the shadows, feeding on America’s seedy underbelly of filth and degradation. Marihuana is that assassin: a violent narcotic, and unspeakable scourge; the real public enemy number 1! REEFER MADNESS: THE MUSICAL depicts the tale of Jimmy Harper, an exemplary, upstanding lad tragically ravaged and twisted into a hedonistic and murderous weed fiend as the reefer seduces him into a world filled with sadistically wild orgies, junkie zombies, homicide, and the devil himself!
In 1936, a small church group produced a movie to warn of the ‘real-life effects’ that marijuana has on America’s innocent youth entitled Tell Your Children! The full-feature film exposes the most typical side-effects of pot, including the tendencies to engage in orgies, rape, homicide, and suicide. Two years later, exploitation guru Dwain Esper bought the rights for $297, added scenes with scantily-clad women, and re-edited some of the original footage to be more implicative of drug-induced sexual aggressiveness; he also re-titled the film to REEFER MADNESS! Sixty-Five years later, Dan Studney (Composer, TV: Weird Science, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, projects with Matt Groening) and Kevin Murphy (Lyricist, Co-Executive Producer, Desperate Housewives) were inspired to put the original script on stage, decked-out with boundary-crossing propaganda and raucous stereotypes, fueled with hatred for exploitative political fear tactics; All held together by a glorious ‘Big-Broadway-Musical’ score.
CAUTION: REEFER MADNESS is a highly stylized and satirical political commentary. It contains adult humor, religious parody, drug use, as well as suggested violence and sexual explicitness.
It may prove too shocking for some audiences!
REEFER MADNESS: February 22 – March 22 2008
Live Girls Theater – 2220 NW Market St., Ballard in Seattle
