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Bradley a happy camper with 'Birds' and 'Halloween'
Chicago Sun-Times, October 26, 2007
By Misha Davenport
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"Halloween" and "The
Birds" are both classic terror and suspense films. Nothing is sacred,
though, as both are being lovingly spoofed and deconstructed in
separate productions around town.
And
each is brilliantly directed by Scott Bradley, a writer/performer
relatively new to Chicago. Bradley has a future working in camp comedy
in this town.
"Carpenters' Halloween" pits John Carpenter's muderous Michael Myers against the pop music of the Carpenters.
The spartan
production, above Hamburger Mary's and on a stage as wide as two office
cubicles, begins as music director and pianist Jonny Stax plays the
familiar "Halloween" theme as the first few moments of the film play on
television monitors flanking both sides of the stage. As the young
Michael Myers picks up a knife in the film, John Carpenter's haunting theme morphs into the wedding staple "We'bve Only Just Begun," smartly sung by the ensemble cast. The action the shifts from film to the stage.
To go into any great detail about just where and when Bradley pairs the Carpenters' music with the film would be the Halloween equivalent of giving out dental floss: It would ruin the fun. Let's just say Stax and Bradley incorporate the songs in this thrift-store jukebox musical far more cleverly and successfully than did the writers of a certain big-budget Broadway show starring a quartet from New Jersey....
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