Special Report: Zombie Voodoo Scream Party

WHO WOULD GUESS THAT A GORILLA SUIT IS SO COMPLICATED?

"Zombie Voodoo Scream Party" is the brainchild of writer, director, impresario Rider McDowell, whose wife invented Airborne herbal cold tablets. The show is an Ed Woodian cross between Rocky Horror and the Marx Brothers. Scooby-Doo on acid. The plot is quirky-on-rye, the laughs are as cheap and fast as a microwave pizza, and all glued together by lively R&B tunes sung mostly by Keta Bill as Dr. Dierdre; Janis Joplin in a lab coat, and love interest of Cosgrove, Monster Hunter, played by Cal-Shakes veteran James Carpenter.

THE STORY

Cosgrove needs one more monster for his collection of caged horrors, to win this year's Monster Pageant. With his worthless lab assistant, Neetroy the wunder-tard, he vows to find such a creature by show's end, and win the heart of dear Dr. Dierdre before she leaves him, to seek her lost love, Rockmanikanofski – whom, unknown to her, is really Cosgrove, prior to being cursed on his last expedition, to an existence as a forlorn ghoul-scientist by evil Egyptian spirits.

On the verge of his greatest triumph, however, Cosgrove's monsters break loose and wreak havoc. Among them are the hypnotic vampiress, Madam Draculana; Mr. Hillbilly, the mummy-faced redneck cannibal; Babyhead, with the head of an infant and the body of a Tollbooth Attendant; and Garganta, the giant man-eating gorilla from darkest Borneo!

Neetroy also has other plans besides helping his cadaverous employer round up stray monsters – he longs for stardom as a talk-show host, and daydreams of sharing clever banter with touchy celebrities like the sneering, cretinous Elvis clone, Teddy Corn!

Still with me?

Along the way, the show finds time for the exposed butt-crack adorned exploits of Pat, the fay techie and necromancer from Dingleberry Electric – and Sy Fabersham, the expert on poisonous snakes, whose habit is to handle them carelessly, get bitten, panic and then fling the deadly serpents into the audience.

The show's finale is a rousing tap-dance extravaganza featuring the entire cast, monsters and all, and a real dead body is given away to one "lucky" audience member. I fabricate nothing. All true.

THE SHOW

ZVSP premiered Friday, April 11, 2008 at the Golden State Theater in downtown Monterey, California. It played only one weekend; a pair of test-drive performances to iron out a few bugs before heading to New York in '09 for an off-Broadway run. The house sold out both Friday and Saturday nights, with box office revenue benefitting the Monterey Hospice Foundation, and Carmel River School. By the following Monday there was already talk of the show's return in October, appropriately around Halloween.

KSBW Channel 8, the local NBC affiliate pulled the show's ads after a whopping three viewers phoned in to complain about the "real dead body given away free" line. It wasn't a total loss as the ads were on other stations too. The local papers picked up the story as well, so the ban by KSBW resulted in a kind of publicity that can't be bought.

Even after Rider leaked a spoiler to his own show, admitting the "dead body" was just a frozen chicken, the Zombies of Taste prevailed and the station wouldn't budge. The Monterey Hospice, for whom the show was a benefit, thought the gimmick was hilarious. They received no complaints. The ads never said it was a "human" body.

THE CAST

James Carpenter (Cosgrove) is an award-winning San Francisco bay area Equity Shakespearean, whose blog of this show (calshakes-jimsrichardiiiblog.blogspot.com) is far more deliberate and day-to-day than the windy overview offered here. Like all pros of the stage, he took the role seriously and served it well. I found his character charming for a ghoul; a bit reminiscent of John Carradine.

Keta Bill (Dr. Dierdre) brought the house down with her electrifying performances of "I Was Made To Love Him" and "Shoorah Shoorah," to name just two of the numbers built into the show – backed by our three sensational doo-wop ladies: Dania Akkad (also the show's Producer), Sarah Nichols (also Madam Draculana) and Donna McDowell (Rider's step-mother, who shakes it just as hard as the two "young'ns"). Besides being a stovetop-hot knockout, Keta has a mighty impressive résumé in tow, having worked with the likes of Van Morrison and the Grateful Dead, as well as her own groups, Big Bang Beat and the Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra. Her singing has also graced the films "Beverly Hills Cop II" and "Rent."

The third lead, Neetroy was Equity actor Sam Misner. Sam's background includes Shakespeare Santa Cruz. He seemed familiar, as I know a few others who've worked with Shakes-SC, though I'm not sure he and I had met before. To near-extreme contrast, Sam also plays a smooth-as-silk guitar and sang some Hank Williams between a few rehearsals.

Rare is the show where I'm not the biggest or tallest member of the cast, but this was one of them. Brandon Peterson is 6' 10" and that's before he puts on the Frankenstein boots! He also played the Jersey Devil in a costume that increased his height to over 8 feet – check out the photo. This was Brandon's very first show, and I think the theatre bug has bitten. It will be interesting just to see how a man of his height and uniqueness is put to use by other theatre groups. Meeting his charming family was also one of the show's highlights for me.

Another cast member with a noteworthy musical legacy was Rudy "Tutti" Grayzell. It was ironic, or maybe apropos, that Rider cast him as Teddy Corn, the evil Elvis clone. Rudy sang for Sun Records in the 50s, and knew and worked with the real Elvis. It was the King who first dubbed him "Tutti." Rudy is a Rockabilly Hall of Fame inductee, whose hit recording from that era was "Ducktail" on the Starday label. The logic of the Teddy Corn character in this show is a bit puzzling – to everyone but Rider McDowell. At one point, Teddy walks onstage, to fill an awkward gap while costume-change panic rages backstage. He tells one of the many long-whiskered jokes that pepper the show, waits, points to someone in the crowd and snarls "you wanna piece of me?" This surreal little slice never fails to earn a huge laugh. Partially because of Rudy's opaquely deadpan delivery. Teddy then exits offstage with the same sullen determination he entered with. Again, only Rider really truly "gets" it. But the audience seems to love it, even if they may not comprehend the momentary detour into the Twilight Zone.

Pat, from Dingleberry Electric, was Howard Hinkley. Howard has been a mercurial presence in the Monterey peninsula theatre scene for some time. He's also had bit parts in nearly every feature film shot here in the past 20 years. A unique personality both on and off stage, Howard has basically created his own category of actor – that only he fits. Everyone knows Howard, and almost everybody has worked with him. His costume as Pat, which he reveled in, featured a pair of enlarged rubber butt cheeks flowing out of his trouser-tops, complete with a brown skidmark blazing up the taut center of his underwear. From backstage, when Howard was on, the audience reaction told you whenever Howard dropped his screwdriver and bent over to pick it up. Who said this wasn't a classy show?

Rider's 8-year old son, Errol, and yardstick-tall stage diva Ardrian Tidwell served both as Cosgrove's junior monster hunter volunteers, and as the two "planted" kids in the audience that the Jersey Devil kidnaps at mid-show (Brandon taking his life in his hands, descending those narrow stairs in the dark, wearing hooves).

Then we come to my pal Jody Gilmore. If you have visited the Planc Productions link on my website, you know that Jody and I go back a-ways. He has been a remarkable associate, and a staple of some of my own productions, including his triumphal starring role in our tribute show to Lenny Bruce, "Mr. Bruce, Do You Swear?" In ZVSP he played a role he probably wonders if he invented: "The Cast of Thousands." Constantly switching costumes backstage, Jody assumed the persona of Mr. Hillbilly, then the police officer pursuing the Jersey Devil, then a stagehand on Neetroy's dream-sequence talk-show, then a theater manager being chased by the escaped monsters, and even an anonymous screaming victim in the audience. Jody bought a pair of running shoes for his part in the show, and left a worn trail on the Golden State Theater's lavish carpets.

Who did I play, you ask? I can only repeat what I said time after time during rehearsals, when nights ran long, or technical glitches brought dead zones of waiting: "Don't ask me, I'm just the guy in the gorilla suit."

Like Jody reprising his trademark "thousands" role from his formative days, the "shtick" of my early theatre career was Wearer of Stuffy Costumes. The tree, the big rabbit, etc. I've logged over 100 performances as Winnie the Pooh, in children's theatre. In ZVSP I too returned, in a way, to my roots.

You must understand that Garganta's costume wasn't a wholesale Halloween slap-job. When I first saw the Garganta suit, it looked familiar. I'd seen this gorilla design, or one similar, in films and TV shows. Rider sought out a professional maker of Hollywood-level feature film gorillas, and had one custom tailored. Garganta is a $10,000 work of beauty, by gorilla suit specialist Steve Myers, whose furry, fanged masterpieces can be seen, admired and purchased at HollywoodGorilla.com.

Garganta's lower jaw is hinged; the mouth can be made to open by the wearer's jaw. The hinge was a bit stiff, though, and during a rehearsal I strained my neck muscles practicing with it. We're talking pain akin to whiplash. For days I had problems turning my head side-to-side, and driving was difficult. Luckily Jim Carpenter is a massage guru of sorts, and loosened up my neck and shoulders to where I could move again. It wasn't the suit's fault, it was just part of my learning curve with this level of costume.

Wearing the gorilla head meant using black eye makeup so that my skin wouldn't contrast with the color of the gorilla, when seen through the large eye sockets. I had to blacken up from brow-line down to about the upper lip. After the show, when the head came off, and sweat poured as if from a pitcher, I looked like a Picasso painting of Tammy Faye!

The suit's most obvious feature – it's a portable sauna. I think I lost ten pounds playing the big monkey. Rider bought an icepack vest for me to wear under the suit, so I wouldn't melt like "Fosty" the snowman. It's a Velcro girdle with tube-pockets all around, and twelve form-fitted gel ice packs. It stayed in the dressing room fridge until needed, but during the hours of start-n-stop rehearsals it warmed up to the suit's temperature, and became simply dead weight. Since most of Garganta's business happened in the second act, I decided not to use the vest until intermission. The first act was an endurance test, but I kept my movement to a minimum when offstage. In Act II, wearing the vest nearly caused hypothermia under all that sweaty fur, but it was a welcomed shock to the system. Also at intermission I shoveled additional freezer ice down the front of the suit. It was "winter in the cellar" in there, and the wooly insides were soaked by final curtain, but oh sweet lawdy-lawd was it so frosty-good!

Along with the vest, I had to wear a battery pack and a wired lavaliere mic taped along my jaw line, to my upper lip, so Garganta's roars could be heard over the theater sound system. Without a mic, my roars were muffled by the gorilla head, hardly audible to those even in the second row.

Garganta's role included flatulence humor – fart cues. The gorilla swipes Neetroy's dinner, defiantly eats it right in front of him, then adds insult to injury by hunkering down and birthing a vicious gut demon. The farts were sound effects courtesy of the techboard operator, but eventually Rider determined that there weren't enough farts on the soundtrack. Since my face was hidden by the gorilla head, and I could do pretty much anything in there without the audience spying it, he instructed me to add incidental farts throughout the show – enhance key moments, and punctuate the dialogue of other actors, by letting rip whenever I felt the urge – with some Poot-of-the-Loom jockey bisquits. For some reason the mic wasn't picking up my fart riffs very good, so Rider had me and the sound technician do some audio tests before the show – a "fart check."

This was one of the more surreal moments of my acting career. The Golden State is by far the most ornate and historic performance venue on the Monterey peninsula. Built in 1926, it has been painstakingly, expensively, restored to its original opulence. Top acts play here; Willie Nelson, Tony Bennett, B.B. King... Emmylou Harris and Los Lobos are due this summer. The dressing rooms beneath the theater are from the days of vaudeville. As an actor, working this stage is a treat; it lends a feeling of having "arrived" as a performer. Here I was... center-stage, in a spotlight, before an empty house, save the director and the sound guy... auditioning farts.

Shows, events and celebrities will pass through this old theater for years to come, but the spirits that reside here will remember me.

The night before opening was a near-disaster. Because of the heavy load of tech effects that had to be perfected, the actors still hadn't done a complete run-thru (with less than 24-hours till opening curtain – yes, insanity). The suit was unbearable by the third hour, so I went backstage to get out of it. That's when I added my contribution to the chaos – the gorilla's zipper broke! I mean, off! It's in back of the suit, out of reach and impossible to work by myself. I'm thankful Rider didn't give me some other part that meant a costume change, because there was just no way. The shaggy fur was constantly jamming the zipper, and it was only a matter of time before someone tried too hard – which the person assisting me did, and... SNAP! Luckily our local costume expert, Adrianna Wellisch, dropped by the theater on some other errand. She took the suit home, and brought it back on opening night with a brand new stealthy black zipper with extra surrounding material, which gave me about 2-3 inches more breathing room, and made for an easier zip, too. A third-party zipper may have shot the suit's value down a notch, but it was absolutely necessary.

My biggest test in the suit was the finale dance number. It was hard enough learning the steps – dancing is fun, just not exactly one of my strengths on stage – but to do them in a wet gorilla suit yet! The moment I dreaded was the lead-up to the final bow. After running around in 75 pounds of soggy fur, then barreling through a big dance finish, I was suffocating! Inside that head, I just couldn't draw in enough air to sate my lungs! My heart was pounding! And I still had to bow, wave and generally frolic around as if this was an ultimate moment of consummate joy! I thank God it was only 30 seconds. A giant murderous beast who spends most of the show terrorizing the cast, then drops dead after a tap dance, just wouldn't fit the show's continuity. (Or maybe it would have fit a little too well, for my preference anyway.)

When that curtain rang down for the final time on Saturday night, I quite literally ran out of gas, at that very moment. Shuffling backstage, flopping down in a chair, and slowly emerging from the gorilla hide like a sweaty, exhausted caterpillar who couldn't figure out the butterfly trick, was all I could do. I had to take an early leave from the cast pizza party... too pooped.

If the show really does return in October, will I endure Garganta all over again? Yep, probably will. "Man In Gorilla Suit" is, afterall, one of the iconic roles in all of entertainment: Hamlet, Tibalt, Atticus Finch... Gorilla. Can I get an amen.

AFTER THE BOWS

Wow – one long mother of a blog entry. I should not sign off before acknowledging a few others owed supreme gratitude. First, Carey Crockett, whose work in Monterey theatre has often gone under-heralded and under-appreciated. His set designs and creative contributions added just the right balance, between scary and funny. Because the man knows his shite. So many performers (including this one) around the area, owe their start to Carey, whose own theatrical company, Unicorn Theatre, thrived here for over 25 years, holding its own among the larger, better financed companies like Pacific Repertory and the Forest Theater Guild, both of Carmel. (And those companies owe him a rose bouquet or two, as well.)

The backstage crew was top-drawer, and brought together one of the most tech-heavy shows I've seen in years. Jeff Barrett, Pete Hoegemeier, Brandon Rubin, Mike Berge, John Brady, Mark Shuler, William Birch, Dania Ketcham and – c'mon, I know there were more...

Two more. Our choreographer, and unofficial co-director, Walter White, was a pleasure to work with, talk to, and be whipped into shape by. A pillar of patience, tower of talent, hero of hoofing, and a nice chap on top of it all. Thanks, Walter.

Lydia Lyons – she is almost too much for words – a treasure. Our unsung Stage Manager took up the job when Betsy Longoria, the official SM, left to go give birth to her first baby (an event that overrides any mere stage show). Quite simply, I always cherish seeing pros at work. Not just people who happen to get a paycheck doing what they do, but real-deal individuals who "get it." She held ground, kept schedules, calmed tempers and even knew the dances better than any of us! She did all, and was a pal, too. I'd work with her again in a heartbeat – and hope to. She also happens to be a damn fine singer and actress, who takes it seriously enough to make it her profession. Hey, anyone who can pay bills with acting jobs is a force to be reckoned with – no lightweight, this lady. Have I said enough? Oh yeah... and she's hot.

The regular staff of the Golden State Theater must be honored here too. Thanks folks for letting us nearly destroy an historic California landmark – former vaudeville house, purveyor of classic cinema for near a century, and in 2008, harbor of fart-joke laden monster musicals. I think the act to follow us in late April was the Kingston Trio. Hoo-boy! Guys, don't slip in the puddle of gorilla sweat during "Scotch & Soda."

And let me not overlook the obvious: Rider McDowell. He's not enslaved by poverty, to say the least. He could sit in his recliner, in any one of his fine homes, with his equally entrepreneurial (and lovely) wife, and beautiful family, count his riches, and tell the world outside to go screw. But does he? No. He uses those riches, to enrich others, in his own offbeat but purposeful way, with entertainment and quirky humor, and a need to affect the world around him with something unexpected, and positive. There are so many nabobs of negativity running rampant on this tired old planet of ours – I consider it a rare pleasure to meet a Rider McDowell, and use my own talents in concert with his. Here publicly... Thank you, Mr. McDowell, for more than just "puttin' on a show."