Reefer Madness: This joint is jumpin'

By Jay Cridlin, Times Staff Writer
Published September 7, 2007

The satirical musical about the evils of marijuana hits Ybor.
	[Handout photo]

Reefer Madness
The satirical musical Reefer Madness shows at 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sept. 14-15 and Sept. 26-29 at the Ritz Theatre (formerly the Masquerade), 1503 E Seventh Ave., Ybor City. Tickets are $18 in advance and $20 at the door. For more info call (813) 786-6291 or visit www.madtheatre.com.

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It's 15 minutes from the MAD Theatre Company's final dress rehearsal of Reefer Madness.

Costumes are missing. Set pieces need stapling. Lighting cues still are being tweaked.

And the artistic director is busy making his case for the legalization of pot.

"America would be more of a supporting and accepting country if they weren't so judgmental and closed-minded," says Justyn Wade Dansby, 27. "So many people aren't open to the thought process of trying it. From the beginning, they just think it's so wrong and you shouldn't do it. People don't like change. They don't like to try new things."

That's where MAD comes in. The 8-year-old company's stated mission is to get people to think outside their comfort zones - and with this month's staging of Reefer Madness, a satirical musical about the evils of marijuana use, the company has scare-tactic propagandists squarely in its sights.

"It's not pro or anti-drug," director S.D. Riordan, 28, says of the play. "Like most good theater, it tries to have an audience keep an open mind and say, 'Draw your own conclusions.'"

Of course, he adds: "It's certainly going to appeal to the pro-marijuana movement - more so than it would the anti-marijuana movement, probably. But the heart of it, and the heart of all good musical theater, is the show itself, and what it symbolizes as a work of art."

Back in the day, you'd have to be high to call Reefer Madness a work of art. The story originated in 1936 as Tell Your Children, an anti-drug propaganda film in which a handful of innocent teens experiment with pot. From the moment the vile hippie lettuce hits their lungs, the innocent kids in the film descend into a hell of weed addiction, murder, rape, and - worst of all - jazz music. Just like in real life.

No one bought into the movie's over-the-top fundamentalist message - no one, that is, except college-age stoners, who in the '70s renamed the film Reefer Madness and turned it into a cult midnight movie. In 1999, High Times named it one of the 10 greatest drug movies of all time. (Today the film is in the public domain; you can watch or download it for free from Google Videos.)

In 1999, L.A. writers Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney turned Reefer Madness into a satirical stage musical, exaggerating the teens' downfall and tossing in a little light cannibalism for kicks. The play was a hit, and in 2005 it became a Showtime movie starring Alan Cumming and Kristen Bell.

When the time came for MAD to pick this fall's show, Dansby made a push for the MAD Theatre board of directors to pick Reefer Madness, which hadn't been staged on this scale in Tampa Bay.

"It's got everything from sex to drug use to lying to cheating to stealing to killing, and it's definitely up our alley because they're issues that people deal with every day," he says. "A lot of the board had no clue what it was about, but the title grabbed them. It was like, 'Ooh, that's gotta be interesting.'"

The venue won't hurt, either. Reefer Madness is being staged in Ybor City's Ritz Theatre - formerly the home of the Masquerade - so theater-goers can stroll down Seventh for a nightcap after each performance.

"The show sort of lends itself to a cabaret atmosphere," Riordan says. "It's one of those shows that's an audience pleaser, and it's going to bring nontraditional theater-goers to the theater, which is what all community theater wants to see happen."

Nontraditional theater-goers, as in ... stoners?

Possibly, Dansby says. "I honestly think a good majority (of the crowd), over half, would be pro-legalizing it," he says.

But MAD isn't out to attract only the Harolds and Kumars and Cheeches and Chongs of the world. They're out to sing uproarious ditties about pot brownies and finding Jesus and selling your baby for weed money.

"All I know is that I love really good theater that's poignant, that makes people think, that takes people on a journey, and this show does that in spades," Riordan says.

Besides, if you think Reefer Madness is hot, wait until you see what MAD has in store for spring: A musical called The Life about the seedy lives of people on the streets of New York City.

It's about prostitution.

[Last modified September 6, 2007, 10:35:44]