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.
