A possessed Megan (Emma Hunton) strikes at Father Barren (Jesse Merlin) in Michael Shaw Fisher’s Exorcistic: The Rock Musical.
Any number of things can go wrong when attempting a musical parody of The Exorcist. After all, William Friedkin’s 1973 classic horror movie was itself rumored to be cursed, having experienced more than its share of injuries and deaths during filming. Plus, it can be tricky finding the yucks in William Peter Blatty’s story, which takes blood and puke as seriously as it does Satan and the priesthood. Writer and performer Michael Shaw Fisher gives it a shot nonetheless with Exorcistic: The Rock Musical. Its dynamic cast is wholly committed to the bit and sing as if possessed, but Fisher’s script, which he began drafting in 2012, is convoluted to the point that audience members may be left wondering what the devil is going on.
Father Garras (Ethan Crystal, left) confers with Father Pryor (Steven Cutts).
The problems are not what one would predict. Under the direction of Chadd McMillan and Alli Miller-Fisher, there are no gross-out moments. The production is not too campy nor gratuitously profane. Instead, the piece ventures into the realm of experimental theater, allowing itself, as a cast member asserts, “permission to occasionally pause the show and deconstruct,” thus creating a play within a play, a parody of a parody, a metatextual experience that gets in its own way while busily commenting upon itself.
On one level, Exorcistic tells the story of a theater company and its success in developing a musical called Exorcistic. It begins as a staged reading under the working title, The Untitled Un-Authorized Exorcist Rock Musical Parody Project, then transfers Off-Broadway with a new title taken from one of the film’s most quotable lines: the endearing epithet said by demon to priest, Your Mother Sucks Cocks in Hell. By the time it reaches Broadway, homicide has paved the way for some changes from the original cast.
Jaime (Jaime Lyn Beatty) and two diggers (Michael Shaw Fisher, center, and Crystal) hunt for artifacts. Photographs by David Haverty.
The troupe members are grumpier or more self-obsessed versions of the real-life actors who portray them; a generally unlikable bunch all around. Harried stage manager Jaime (Jaime Lyn Beatty) immediately refers to her actors as “assholes.” Fisher plays a drunken version of himself, and Emma (Emma Hunton), the company’s newest member, is a method actor doomed to be consumed by her role as the victimized young girl, Megan. Meanwhile, sexual tension builds between Leigh (Leigh Wulff) and Ethan (Ethan Crystal) while their characters—Megan’s mother, Kate, and Father Garras—try to avoid making a scene.
Several times during the night the actors break out of their quasi-characters to present an “Anatomy of a Scene,” a brief talk given directly to the audience reflecting on whatever action had just occurred onstage. “During the pandemic, the demand for exorcist-trained-priests tripled, with the requests in Italy reaching 500,000 per year,” goes one such lecture.
Father Garras (Crystal) works to rid Megan (Hunton) of evil.
Strip away all these postmodern interruptions, and what remains is a raunchy and blasphemous romp of a musical awash in joyful sin. Indeed, the production is at its entertainment peak when it is at its moral nadir. Highlights include “Howdy Captain Rowdy,” a number that finds 12-year-old Megan experiencing a sacrilegious sexual awakening assisted by a fiend (Steven Cutts) she conjures with a Ouija board. Hunton goes full throttle here, as she does shortly thereafter in a number that again borrows from the film’s vulgar vocabulary, “Your C---ing Daughter.” A four-piece band, hidden from view, drives home the beat.
Adding to the mischief, a surprise celebrity guest shows up for each performance to deliver one of the show’s cruder songs. Scheduled performers include Lance Bass, Marissa Jaret Winokur, and Evan Rachel Wood, but the bar was set by downtown diva and “international vex symbol” Sophia Urista, who wasn’t kidding when she sang, “The dark side of my moon’s bending like a prism.”
Any Exorcist fan would come to this show with certain expectations. Many are met. The memorable theme music, Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” gets a nod, as do the infamous stairs where more than one character meets his death. But of the big three—levitation, projectile vomiting, and 360-degree head spins—only levitation is properly ritualized, via a clever bit of staging with a bed going vertical. The barf here is made pretty, and the head-spinning attempt disappoints.
Surprisingly, many of the evening’s funniest moments involve physical schtick, including a gag with an extra-long phone cord that nearly strangles a few audience members and an impressive flex by Hunton, who manages a backward spider walk that Linda Blair would have envied. Wulff, when not showing off her fine singing voice, displays her comic chops by trying to tame a flowing dress that won’t stop flowing (costumes are by Chadd McMillan). Offering a counterpoint, and words of wisdom, Hunton shows up in a T-shirt that reads, “Live. Laugh. Levitate.”
Exorcistic: The Rock Musical runs through Oct. 4 at Asylum NYC (123 E 24th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m Monday through Saturday. For tickets and information, visit exorcistic.com.
Book & Score: Michael Shaw Fisher
Direction: Chadd McMillan & Alli Miller-Fisher
Costumes: Chadd McMillan
Lighting: Will Elphingstone
Sound: Tyler Walkes
