A science-fiction musical of Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 Masque of the Red Death featuring a same-sex lead couple, electric "cibongs" and enough red goo to make David Cronenberg squirm? Yes please, America.
Based on Wendy Pini's graphic novel remix of the classic short story, the thriller features music by Gregory Nabours and is directed by Calvin Remsberg. Pini and Nabours collaborated on the lyrics, and their work hits the stage at North Hollywood's NoHo Arts Center later this month for an invitation-only first reading.
The new rendition is set in a obscenely consumerized, scandal-hungry future, where a wealthy scientific recluse, Anton Prosper (Ashes' Stephen Good), slowly perfects a dangerous nanotechnological cure for aging. Love strikes in the form of a Steffan Kabala (NCIS:LA's Zach Villa), the brilliant son of a rival geneticist. Spoilers: everyone's flesh melts into a congealed puddle of shmeat.
An early step on the road to a full-scale production, the performance isn't open to the public, but will have the cast and crew shake out bugs in the script and songs–albeit not the bugs that will make their skin fall off. Pini is the co-creator of Elfquest, oft-featured here at BB; Nabours wrote The Trouble With Words and was awarded a 2011 Ovation Award.
