Boy meets girl.<\/p>\n
Girl loves boy, but parents disapprove.<\/p>\n
Boy commits suicide at a nuclear-power plant but returns as a zombie \u2014 just in time to take girl to the big dance.<\/p>\n
Zombie Prom, opening tonight in the Drake Center\u2019s Thurber Theatre, is a musical with an unlikely happy ending: Girl gets ghoul.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost like watching a 1950s horror-sci-fi B movie, complete with a 1950s rock score,\u201d Mandy Fox said.<\/p>\n
Fox is directing the Ohio State University Theatre Department production of the career-boosting early off-Broadway musical by former central Ohioans John Dempsey (book and lyrics) and Dana P. Rowe (music).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story is funny,\u201d Fox said. \u201cThe show is visually exciting, and the music is wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brisk two-act show \u2014 which runs less than two hours, including intermission \u2014 is billed as a family-friendly musical appropriate for older children with parental guidance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some adult humor,\u201d Fox said, \u201cbut it\u2019s presented in a way that only the adults will get.\u201d<\/p>\n
OSU junior Trent Rowland plays Jonny, a troubled rebel and orphan attending Enrico Fermi High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith elements of camp and the macabre, this show makes fun of itself \u2014 like Grease meets The Rocky Horror Show,\u201d said Rowland, 21.<\/p>\n
Although Rowland participates in a half-dozen musical numbers, he sings only two solos: Blast From the Past in the first act and How Can I Say Goodbye in the second.<\/p>\n
\u201c Blast is a manic celebration when Jonny comes back from the dead triumphantly,\u201d Rowland said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Goodbye, Jonny tries to convince Toffee that we can get back together and make this work.”<\/p>\n
Jonny stumbles through life until he meets Toffee (Kelly Hogan), a fellow student.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the main themes is this idea of eternal love and what love can do \u2014 even bringing people back from the dead,\u201d Rowland said.<\/p>\n
When Toffee\u2019s parents disapprove of her bad-boy boyfriend, a despondent Jonny races off on his motorcycle to the town\u2019s nuclear-power plant and falls into the silo to his death.<\/p>\n
Or so it seems.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when he comes back from the dead, he\u2019s revitalized with an almost-manic energy and determination,\u201d Rowland said, \u201cnot only to get Toffee back but to set his life straight and graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another obstacle standing in the way of the two young lovers is Miss Delilah Strict, the high-school principal.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s as strict as her name and wound incredibly tight,\u201d said Liz Light, the 21-year-old senior who plays her.<\/p>\n
The secretive principal is hiding something in her past \u2014 including an old boyfriend.<\/p>\n
Light said she tries to evoke the aura of an undercover femme fatale \u2014 which ties into the character\u2019s unspoken past.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re taking some weird twists with the satire,\u201d Light said.<\/p>\n
First staged in 1993 in Key West, Fla., the musical opened off-Broadway in 1996 and helped to establish a reputation for emerging talents Dempsey and Rowe, who started out by creating children\u2019s musicals in the early 1980s at Players Theatre Columbus.<\/p>\n
Dempsey and Rowe went on to do several musicals, including The Fix and The Witches of Eastwick \u2014 which British producer Cameron Mackintosh backed for a run in London.<\/p>\n
Rowe will return to Columbus to see the show and participate in a discussion after the Nov. 16 performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes it all the more exciting to know that two Columbus talents created the musical,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n
\u201cZombie Prom is a confirmation of the vibrant theater tradition we have in Columbus, including the creation of new works.\u201d