After 25 years, each technology of Reefer Madness: The Musical gathered this week in Hollywood to have a good time the present’s milestone anniversary and a brand new age of hashish.
Throughout Tuesday’s Reefer Insanity Legacy Concert in Hollywood, the solid and creators of the cult stage musical carried out some beloved songs from the present, in addition to some minimize numbers, and revealed some hilarious behind-the-scenes secrets and techniques.
Based on OG director Andy Fickman, who served because the night’s emcee, Mary Lane star Kristen Bell chipped her tooth on a pullout sofa in her trailer whereas filming the 2005 Showtime film musical adaptation. Though the actress wished to restore the tooth with superglue and proceed filming, Fickman insisted she go to an expert.
Fickman additionally revealed that film was made below the caveat that they movie on the identical Vancouver, Canada set beforehand used for the pilot of The L Word (2004-2009). The director additionally thanked then-Showtime president Robert Greenblatt, who was within the viewers Tuesday.
Author Dan Studney hinted that he was getting excessive with Neve Campbell of their Party of Five days, when he first advised her his thought for the musical. That’s when she recommended her brother and fellow actor Christian Campbell for the all-American main function of Jimmy Harper (despite the fact that Christian is Canadian).
Moreover, Fickman recalled actress Thelma White — who starred as Mae within the authentic 1936 propaganda/exploitation movie Reefer Insanity — attending one of many musical’s early performances earlier than her demise at age 94 in 2005. He stated a hearth dancer got here dangerously near White’s front-row seat, the place she was hooked as much as an oxygen tank and feared for her life.
Tuesday’s occasion featured performances of a few of the musical’s most beloved songs, in addition to some tunes that by no means made the present. Campbell graced the viewers with ‘Useless Previous Man’, which Studney stated was the primary track he wrote for the musical.
Rachel Bloom, who’s unaffiliated with the present, additionally made a visitor look. She carried out one other minimize tune, ‘The Monkey Tune’, with Campbell and OG stars Aukai Cain, Samantha Harris and Stacy Sibley. Bloom admitted she was “thought I used to be doing the track with actual monkeys” as an early manufacturing really featured a monkey within the quantity.
Bell handled the viewers to a shock efficiency of ‘Instantly, Seymour’ from Little Shop of Horrors with Anthony Norman, who at present stars as Jimmy within the twenty fifth anniversary manufacturing on the similar venue, The Whitley at 6555 Hollywood Blvd.
Produced by Bell, Studney, Amirose Eisenbach and David Lamoureux, the Reefer Insanity Legacy Live performance additionally featured solid alums Harry S. Murphy, John Kassir, Lori Alan, Paul Nygro and Elijah Myles Breckel, in addition to stars of the present manufacturing, Darcy Rose Byrnes, Thomas Dekker, J. Elaine Marcos, Bryan Daniel Porter, Andre Joseph Aultmon, David Toshiro Crane, Claire Crause, Natalie Holt MacDonald, Jane Papageorge and Alex Tho.
The night benefitted 40 Tons Basis, which brings extra variety to the hashish house by offering second probabilities to these with previous convictions and preventing to launch these at present serving time on non-violent marijuana offenses. 40 Tons founders Loriel Alegrete, Anthony Alegrete and Corvain Cooper have been additionally in attendance, thanking the present’s producers for his or her contribution.
Campbell and Bell are joined by fellow Reefer alum Alan Cumming in producing the brand new adaptation at The Whitley, which is directed and choreographed by Spencer Liff.
Darcy Rose Byrnes, Bryan Daniel Porter and Anthony Norman within the twenty fifth anniversary stage manufacturing of Reefer Insanity: The Musical.
Andrew Patino
“Coming again to this, for me, was a no-brainer,” Bell beforehand advised Deadline. “I owe a lot of my life to those individuals and this present.”
Now 25 years after the unique present debuted in LA, they’ve re-created ‘The Reefer Den,’ a time period of endearment for the café subsequent to the OG musical’s venue the place the solid would congregate after every present. This time round, it’s a totally functioning lounge with dwell performances for a brand new group of reefer fiends to get pleasure from.
Tickets for the Reefer Insanity: The Musical can be found at ReeferMadness.com.
