This should have stayed in ‘South Park’ creator’s drawer

By Joe Brown

Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.

“Cannibal! The Musical” begins promisingly enough. The title is funny, the backdrop is a mountain scene painted “South Park”-style, the comedy begins with a “Deliverance” banjo duel involving a toy beaver, a pushbroom, a hoe and an audience volunteer. Oh, and the cell phone advisory is delivered as a threat.

But that’s when the laughter dies.

The farce trades on the good name of “South Park” co-creator Trey Parker, but it’s a best-forgotten scrap of juvenilia derived from a three-minute trailer Parker made as a film student at Colorado University at Boulder.

Clearly aiming for a cult-comedy audience, director John Beane and his Insurgo Theatre Movement players squeeze nearly three minutes of genuine laughs out of the script, which they’ve padded to two hours.

It’s loud, crude and gross, with jokes about bestiality, bloody violence, accidental homosexuality and Mormonism.

Despite all that, it’s just not funny.

Insurgo mounted “Cannibal!” last year at a funkier venue, and is having another go at the comfy new Stage Door Theatre at Town Square, recently built for and vacated by “Shear Madness.”

It’s a waste of space, good actors and the audience’s time. As the seconds dragged on, I would have happily gnawed off my own arm if it meant I could escape early. But I had to stay, if only to warn innocent playgoers.