In zany spoof about ‘reefer,’ the joke’s on squares

Leila Navidi

Dana Kreitz performs during a dress rehearsal Thursday for “Reefer Madness” at CSN’s Backstage Theatre in North Las Vegas.

By Joe Brown (contact)

Monday, Sept. 21, 2009 | 2 a.m.

About halfway into Act I of “Reefer Madness: The Musical,” it hits you: Chris Mayse picked, produced and directed this show just so he could play God.

Really.

Mayse, artistic director of Atlas Theatre Ensemble, amusingly lords it over his young, 15-person cast and makes a riotous entrance as Jesus, winking and pointing, smirky and smug as a frat boy in Vegas, delivering his heavily reverbed big number surrounded by scantily clad boy and girl angels. Mayse is very funny and the show’s a hoot, but it may take a minor miracle to convince playgoers to make the pilgrimage out to the Cheyenne Campus of College of Southern Nevada in North Las Vegas.

The 1998 musical spoof takes off from the 1936 anti-marijuana exploitation/propaganda film, which has always been played for laughs; the movie’s more lurid moments were later mined for a famous episode of “Dragnet” and a 1968 Sonny Bono flick that was shown at school assemblies.

With its mix of bouncy tunes, clever lyrics and campy-corny knowing noir, “Reefer Madness” plays like a knockoff of “Little Shop of Horrors.” It made its debut in Los Angeles, then moved to off-Broadway, but had the bum luck to open shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when pundits were saying that Americans would never laugh again.

Shaking his head and crossing his arms, our stuffy narrator lectures us with the scared-straight story of chipper teen Jimmy Harper, his gal Mary Lane, and how their wholesome, all-American love was destroyed by the demon weed. One moment they’re jitterbugging with the gang over sodas at the Five and Dime; the next, naive Jimmy is lured into a reefer den, where he’s seduced by sexy stoner Sally, who pulls him into a full-ensemble orgy presided over by horny Satan himself (outfitted in furry jodhpurs).

Jimmy quickly slides from “good egg to bad apple”: Now a giggling, gibbering, paranoid maniac, Jimmy is reduced to stealing from the church collection box to support his weed habit, and when Jesus appears (in appalling patchwork jeans, which are one of the show’s most, um, special effects), he rhymes “Shroud of Turin” with “do I need to test your urine?”

Jimmy manages to get off the stuff, only to be tempted back into addiction by a comically sparkling brownie; meanwhile, valiant Mary treks over land, sea and air to rescue him. Nothing good can come of this, of course, and we’re left (along with a subtext about media manipulation) with a disapproving glare from the Lecturer (who suddenly looks a lot like Dick Cheney), as the chorus darkly intones “When danger’s near/Exploit their fear/The end will justify the means!”

The Atlas cast is fresh and frisky, fully, fearlessly committed to their roles, singing and shimmying at close range. Bright-eyed Drew Yonemori works himself into a hysterical lather as Jimmy (costume designer Kiel Cottrill might have a heart and let the poor guy lose the sweater vest after his first scene). Yonemori is perfectly partnered with Amanda Kraft, who gives a bright showbiz soprano and kooky-ingenue appeal to Mary Lane, who reappears as, well, a changed woman. Rachel Lanyi gives Sally the seductress a bit of Teri Garr’s mischievous sparkles. I’d encourage Joe Hynes to ham it up and lean on his lines even more as the Lecturer (Hynes also pops up as the devil and F.D.R.).

Director Mayse ingeniously squishes several frenetic, full-on production numbers — complete with kick lines and gnawed-off chunks of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video — into in a three-sided stage space that’s probably smaller than your kitchen. He pumps the stage full of (theatrical) smoke and peppers the script with endearingly dopey sight gags, most of which pay off. Two young women periodically parade around like octagon girls displaying moral-underlining placards with such messages as “REEFER MAKES YOU LAUGH AT DEATH.”

Which, you will, of course, especially when reefer den mother Mae finally has enough and hacks her slick pusher-pimp apart with a hoe. There’s lots squirting and splashing, but the audience will lean back because actress Helen C. Roundhill swings her farm implement with lethal abandon.

The show clearly needed more shakedown time before last Friday’s opening. Some of the scenes were snappy and tight, played with period-perfect sass or simper; too many moments were sloppy and loose — it felt like a “let’s-put-on-a show!” in a basement rec room. The actors are miked, the musical quartet (stashed in a loft above the stage) is amped, and the sound wandered in and out — quite a few funny lines didn’t make it to the ears of people seated in the side sections. (It might be best to score a seat facing the stage.)

Mayse and his actors go for berserk and the show could easily catch on with a cult crowd. Basically, if you think the subject matter and premise are funny, you’re going to laugh a lot at “Reefer Madness.”

It may help if you spend a few extra moments in the parking lot before heading in to see the show.