UPDATE: New shows added: Wednesday, October 28 and Saturday afternoon, October 31.  

Michael McKelvey and the cast & crew of Evil Dead, The Musical have a hit on their hands, if you take as evidence the turnout on opening night. The scene at the Salvage Vanguard was like trying to load a 747 at a tin-roofed shack in the Caribbean.

Michael was astonished. Once he'd gotten the surging, enthusiastic elbow-to-elbow crowd into their places, he told us that as of that afternoon they'd had only 60 seats confirmed -- 30 reservations and another 30 distributed to the press and to friends of the company.

He told the folks in the "splash zone" of the first three rows that they wouldn't need those black plastic garbage-bag ponchos until the second act.

This was an audience of happy 20-somethings, except for me and for two rather elegantly deliberate older gentlemen wearing cowboy hats. They all appeared to know the story established by the three 1980s horror flicks that I had never seen or had any interest in seeing.

Five young people set out to spend a weekend at a remote cabin in the woods. Two couples: Ash and Cheryl (David Gallagher and Kelly Bales) and Scott and Shelly (Christopher Skillern and Macey Mayfield); and Ash's bratty little sister Cheryl (Corley Pillsbury). No, they don't know the owner. They're just going to break in and have a good time. The guys are hot for the girls and NO ONE IMAGINES THAT ANYTHING BAD COULD HAPPEN (ooh!). But we know that there's an ancient book of the dead involved, because this creepy guy told us so. The vanished owner has left a tape recorder reciting spells to invoke demons and that gullible Ash just insists on listening to THE WHOLE INCANTATION!!