JOINT VENTURE

In Reefer Madness, New Line Scores Some Killer Weed

From good eggs to bad apples: New Line's Reefer Madness is a smokin'
show.

Reefer Madness
Arts Date: Through June 26
Arts Performed By: New Line Theatre
Details: Call 314-534-1111.
Where: ArtLoft Theatre, 1527 Washington Avenue
Written By: Book by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney, music by Dan Studney,
lyrics by Kevin Murphy

It's 1936, and there's a growing terror on the streets, worse than
jazz, more insidious than communism.

It's marijuana.

One puff can lead to a life of depravity, murder and bad manners.

The movie Reefer Madness was created to put the fear of reefer into
American minds.

The musical Reefer Madness was created to put those minds at ease,
poking fun at the Roosevelt era's demonization of the drug. Kevin
Murphy's sly lyrics and Dan Studney's music are the highlights of New
Line Theatre's mostly hilarious telling of this cautionary tale.
Warning us of the horrors to come, the Lecturer (Tom Conway)
introduces the viewer to Jimmy Harper (Percy Rodriguez) and Mary Lane
(Amanda Butcher), naive high-school sweethearts in the vein of Our
Town's George and Emily. Butcher is perky in pink, with a sweet voice
that matches her face; Rodriguez is bow-tied and baby-faced. Their
duet, in which they imagine a happy ending for Romeo and Juliet,
scores laughs with its over-the-top sappiness.

Enter the weed pusher, Jack (played with oily confidence by Jeff
Pruett) and his girlfriend Mae (Susan Arnold Marks), a
down-on-her-luck under-his-thumb doormat whose good intentions go up
in smoke.

Marks makes both her "addiction" and her struggle against Jack
believable.

The evil of Jack's reefer den is pitted against the apparent goodness
of the "Five-and-Dime," where Jimmy and Mary are scheduled to meet.
Like the big bad wolf, Jack slinks to the store, looking for a new
victim. Before he succeeds in luring Jimmy to his evil empire, he
leads the teens in a snappy jitterbug number (dancing drug dealers --
who knew?). Back in Jack's lair, Jimmy takes a puff and is immediately
stripped to his underwear and taken away for a "carnal carnival"
(nicely rhymed with "bacchanal"). One puff, the Lecturer points out,
was all it took to "transform Jimmy from a good egg to a bad apple."

More groan-inducing rhymes are on tap in Mary's prayerful ballad
"Lonely Pew." "The wafers don't taste so great/ They don't
transubstantiate," she croons.

Her woeful cries lead to the hilarious highlight of Act One:
the appearance of Jesus as a lounge singer intent on saving Jimmy's
soul. In delightful double-deity work, Pruett also plays God's son,
wearing a laughably awful wig and beard.

Backed by a chorus line of singing nuns (including the beatific Colin
DeVaughan), they do a kind of Christ and the Anti-Temptations routine,
urging Jimmy to "Give up the marijuana/This comes straight from the
Madonna." But it takes more than Christ's choral crusade to convince
Jimmy to stop -- it's not until he accidentally kills an old man while
out joyriding that he realizes his need to escape Jack's evil weed.

The biggest topic of discussion during intermission was what the
actors were really smoking onstage, as the authentic aroma of their
cigarettes led to some lively debates about their contents.

And in Act Two, the Smell-O-Rama continues: The evil drug leads to
murder, cannibalism and the awakening of Mary's inner dominatrix.
Jesus returns, working the audience ("Body of me, body of me!" he
calls as he tosses wafers to the crowd), and Mae finally escapes
Jack's clutches to save Jimmy from being executed for a murder he
didn't commit -- or does she? The somber Lecturer insists that when
reefer is involved, there can be no happy ending. He restages the
finale, urging Americans everywhere to "tell your children, fight the
madness, save our country!"

Standouts in the ensemble include Nicholas Kelly and Gypsy Brown.
Kelly sings a side-splitting lullaby (as a baby), and Brown's golden
voice adds shine to every musical number.

It's unfortunate that the company needs body microphones in order to
be heard over the amplified music -- the lyrics are crystal clear, but
the visual effect is distracting. Director Scott Miller uses the wide
stage effectively, but the pacing during dialogue doesn't match the
crisp energy of the songs.

Robin Berger's choreography is humorously snappy; combined with the
fun songs, they happily critique the silly things Americans fear.