Watch Out for the Brownies
2007-07-26
Lock your doors. Pull down your blinds. Be afraid.
Evil is everywhere, and it has a name. It is the demon weed, the insidious marijuana.
“In Reefer Madness” at New Milford’s Theatreworks, we are exposed to the full horrors that marijuana visits on innocents. A parody of the classic cult movie of the same name, “Reefer Madness” opens with a public service announcement, delivered by an ominously serious lecturer (Joe Harding), who takes the stage in subdued lighting. The nation is at risk, he tells us. Evil is stalking the land. It preys on the young and the innocent. Yes, it could happen to you, or to one of your own. Watch, listen, the lecturer urges, as we follow the tragic story of young Jimmy Harper (Matthew Koenig) and sweet Mary Lane (Keilly Gillen McQuail).
Jimmy and Mary are two wholesome American teens. They sip cocoa. They hold hands. They are in love. They read “Romeo and Juliet” together.
“Oh, how does it end?” Mary asks Jimmy, innocently.
Then Jimmy meets smooth-talking Jack (Ralph Colon Jr.), who lures him back to the reefer den where he is seduced by the voluptuous Sally (Amy Grimm) into trying the demon weed.
One puff is all it takes.
Jimmy is overcome by green lights and eerie wailing from the ensemble. He descends into a world of hallucinations and even more horrific reality. Orgies, crime, prostitution, murder, cannibalism, insanity, selling babies, domestic abuse, even the brutal beating of a puppy, there is no evil too base for the reefer fiend. A placard bearing a Valkyrie in black lingerie (Beth Harvison) chronicles the evils of marijuana.
Even Jesus makes an appearance.
In a rock-and-roll reincarnation, He beseeches Jimmy to forsake marijuana and choose the straight and narrow. Then, when the addicted Jimmy refuses, Jesus and the angelic host return to mock him for “not listening to Jesus.”
The actors are gloriously aware of the farce they are handing the audience. The narrator is pompous and self-righteous. Jimmy is tragically comic. Jack is suitably dark and sinister. There is even Ralph (James Hipp) who is so addled by his addiction that he can barely talk and who laughs his way maniacally, stealing scene after scene. But it is the women who truly shine. Gillen McQuail as Mary Lane is splendidly gawky and innocent. Margaret Ann King is powerful as the fatally addicted Mae. And Amy Grim shines in her Theatreworks debut as the lascivious Sally.
The exuberance of the young actors brings the show to life and their antics are laugh-out-loud funny.
So enjoy the show, but here’s a warning: Whatever you do, don’t try the brownies.