Monster's Revenge

The High Desert Center for the Arts is hosting an exciting new play called "Monster's Revenge", and I'm very glad that I was able to see it. I can say very easily that this is one of the most unique and entertaining plays that I've ever attended. Even the structure of the play is unlike anything that you typically find for a theatrical production. The play is a musical, which is both the strength and weakness of the performance.
The theme is simple, a group of naive teenagers enters a 'haunted' theatre to investigate reports of paranormal activity. There are a host of Scooby Doo references to go around for those in the audience who aren't sure what to make of the dated 'groovy' dialog, but even if the audience isn't up to speed for the archetypes of the cast, the tone of the play makes itself known early on.

As I mentioned, it's a musical. I'm sure that there are some original songs in there somewhere, but most of the numbers are takes on popular hits. This is surprising because, well, let's not kid ourselves here. I'm sure there are copyright laws written about this sort of thing. Whether I agree with them or not is another matter entirely. In this case, it was music that gave me a great evening and I was ready to sing along with the cast. So all in all, I don't give a flying leap if royalties were paid to anyone. The director did a great job of putting together a list of fantastic numbers that a local theatrical crew could do justice too. And he succeeded perfectly. In my book, the show was a hit!

The grand finale was a all-cast production of the Black Eyed Peas' "Tonight", although with some creative insertion of some lyrics to tie it in to the overall theme of the play. I actually enjoyed this version over the original. Go figure.