Ash to Ash

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This article was published 25/10/2018 (2730 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The role of Ash in Evil Dead: The Musical requires a triple-threat performer.

Quadruple-threat if you count the chainsaw-hand.

Fortunately, acting, singing, dancing and demonic corpse disposal all happen to come under the skill set of local actor Ryan Ash, on top of the fact that his last name happens to be the first name of the designated hero.

Ash Williams, of course, is the one-handed demon-fighter played by Bruce Campbell in a series of Sam Raimi movies that began with The Evil Dead in 1981, and continued with the sequel/remake Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992). Ash is still around in the cable TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead, now in its third season.

Edmonton-born actor/standup comic Ryan Ash rose through the ranks to take the lead role after doing the fight choreography in the 2014 production at the Park Theatre under the auspices of Wasteland Productions, which produces this show and generally endeavours to mount a Halloween-appropriate show every year at the Park, including the 2015 effort The Rocky Horror Show.

Ash — the actor — enjoys playing the insufferably arrogant Ash — the character — because it’s such a departure from his own somewhat more low-key personality.

“I’m really kind of introverted and soft-spoken in real life, so it’s fun to be cocky,” he says. “That may seem counter-intuitive but a lot of stand-ups are like that actually.”

Ash loves the fact the show — which includes a “splash zone” in the front seats for audience members who don’t mind being doused in fake blood — attracts audiences that otherwise don’t partake of the typically genteel pleasures of theatre.

“This is a fun show for everyone!” Ash asserts. “If you like pro wrestling, put on your jean jacket and come on by.”

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The musical’s director, Quinn Greene, best known in Winnipeg as one of the members of the sketch comedy show HUNKS, is one of the driving forces behind this production as one of producers of Wasteland Productions, alongside co-director Dan De Jaeger.

On the phone from the Wasteland studio, Greene says a remounting of the show came at the request of the Park Theatre’s Erick Casselman.

“Last year, we were going to do Cannibal: The Musical (by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone) and we had applied for the rights but we didn’t get them,” Greene says.

“So we took a sabbatical because Rory and I got very, very busy with HUNKS. Then Erick had approached Dan and I about re-mounting this because it did so well the first time around.

“And we leapt at the opportunity.”

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Greene has always held the Evil Dead franchise near and dear to his heart since the age of 13. That was when his father Dave Greene, an Elvis tribute artist, took the family to the Collingwood Elvis Festival in Ontario and left young Quinn (”a 13-year-old punky teenage dork”) to babysit his younger brother in their hotel.

“My dad said, ‘Your mom and I want to go out. Please look after your brother and when he goes to bed, you can rent whatever movies you want. Ratings don’t matter.’”

Quinn basically mounted his own dusk-to-dawn program of horror movies: “Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead and then both of the Evil Dead movies.

“It’s in the middle of the night, I’m in this strange hotel room, my parents are away and I was just sitting at the edge of the bed watching these movies that just blew my mind,” he says, especially praising the comic tone of the Raimi films.

“I was so horrified, but because of that comedic element, I was laughing so hard… in that terrified way.”

If the movie is a cult movie, this is Wasteland’s attempt to boost the notion of cult theatre.

“We have a life-size, blood-spraying moose head I’m looking at right now in the studio,” he says. “Its eyes light up. It’s a mean, bad-mouthing, shit-talking, crazy moose.

“We’re in studio right now making headless, blood-squirting body rig and trying to spray as much blood on people as possible.

“We’re looking at doing things that are really outside of the box and really crazy,” he says. “At rehearsal the other day, a member of the cast said: ‘Is this too much? Is this too big?’

“And we’re like: ‘No. We start at too-big and go up from there. That’s where we want to be.’”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing