Reefer Madness (RL Productions)

Think we're living in oppressively PC times? Think again. In 1930s America, conservative hysteria knew no bounds, case in point being the unhinged fear mongering of anti-marijuana propaganda film Reefer Madness. Aiming to strike terror into the hearts of law-abiding suburbanites, it offered a window on the seedy underworld of drug-addled stoners, and their despicable attempts to recruit impressionable minds to join their skunked-up throng. Even just a few curious tokes could see fine, upstanding, Grade-A students transformed into rabid fiends who stop at nothing to get their next hit of sweet lady Mary Jane. Just a couple of innocent puffs promised a one-way ticket to a debauched and depraved life of sin, hooked on the devil's weed.

In the eight decades since the film's release, its self-satirising sensationalism has seen it become a cult classic and (perhaps unsurprisingly) a musical, by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, debuting off-Broadway in 1998 before receiving an all-star TV adaptation in 2005. Revelling in the high-camp, mega-kitsch absurdity of its source material, every ridiculous consequence of pot smoking - from rape, to cannibalism, to hocking your baby for drug money - is given the OTT song and dance treatment the original practically begs for. To be honest, this stage adaptation is relatively middle-rank musically speaking, but with its outrageously hokey tropes, that mock the sentimental cheesiness of musicals as much as the hyperbole of the film, it finds a comic sweet spot that gives a director carte blanche to go full throttle in almost every regard.

Stephen Wheat, director of the Melbourne premiere production of Reefer Madness: The Musical, does exactly that: pushing the zany, cartoonish, squeaky-clean moralising turned monstrous fall from grace to the point of B-Movie horror. Just watching these performances is exhausting, and rightly so. To reach its full potential, the momentum and energy of a staging must be unanimously lurid from curtain up to curtain call, and it's a great credit to this RL Productions cast that their commitment to these eye-straining caricatures is as total as this.

Wheat has assembled some first-rate emerging talents. As the romantic leads, preppy sweethearts Jimmy Harper and Mary Lane, Ben Adams and Grace O'Donnell-Clancy are superbly cast. Adams delivers a particularly impressive turn, maintaining a consistent intensity throughout while switching the focus of the performance from wide-eyed innocence to feral addiction. As the agitating headteacher, James Cutler offers a side-splitting comic performance, as does Rosa McCarty as the woefully hooked yet conscience-stricken pot den madam Mae.

The ensemble plays a major role in this production's success, delivering pin-sharp footwork to Yvette Lee's punchy choreography, as well as some impressive supporting roles - special mention must go to Ed Deganos for his Vegas-esque Jesus. Some technical issues with head mics, and one or two lapses in vocal consistency took off a little of the shine from the opening night performance, but it's otherwise hard to fault these weed freaks - they're smokin'.

RL Productions presents Reefer Madness: The Musical, at Chapel Off Chapel until 4 Dec.