BRAT delivers a new twist on 'Carrie'
The Intelligencer

By Naila Francis | 10/4/10

There will be plenty of blood. This Michael Alltop guarantees.

But when Brat Productions presents its gleefully inventive take on the horror classic “Carrie” as its newest Halloween spectacular, audiences will definitely be in for a few surprises.

Alltop, Brat’s producing artistic director who also is directing the show, acknowledges that the movie’s iconic status may have audiences coming in with certain expectations, especially since many are more familiar with the film than they are the classic 1974 Stephen King novel upon which it was based.

But this version of “Carrie” is the play penned by Erik Jackson, who actually received permission from King to adapt his best-seller, and in 2006 introduced the legendary tale of a misfit telekinetic teen who gets her revenge on her tormenters at the senior prom as a dark comedy.

The play enjoyed a sold-out off-Broadway run and starred internationally known drag queen Sherry Vine in the titular role. Brat’s production, which begins with a preview on Wednesday at Underground Arts at the Wolf Building in Philadelphia, is the first new rendering since 2006 and will star New Jersey-based actor, drag performer and musician Erik Ransom in the role of Carrie.
“Anytime that you play something in drag, there’s a certain element of ‘It’s not normal,’ and I think people can have a new theatrical experience with watching a man in drag but also in a show they think they know, and we’re taking that and putting it into a completely different realm for them,” says Alltop.

Though the play does echo the movie, it remains truer to the book, which is why, as unusual as it may seem, the choice of a gender-bending lead is actually more apt.

“If you read the book, the descriptions of Carrie are so far removed from what Sissy Spacek looks like (in the movie),” says Alltop, noting director Brian De Palma’s depiction of Carrie as petite and feminine and especially gorgeous on prom night. “Stephen King describes her as a cow; he literally says she’s bovine. She’s fat, she had dimples on her face, back and buttocks. She is an ugly girl and people make fun of this ugly girl.”

Yet if the play called for Carrie to be played by a female, he believes audiences could not help but compare her to Spacek and judge her performance accordingly.

“What they will see is someone who’s odd-looking, thick in the middle, lumpy and misshapen and has a strange-looking face. The vision of a man in a dress is very off-putting and odd and weird, and that’s the feeling you get in the book,” says Alltop. “I actually think our visual depiction of Carrie will be more accurate than what the movie gives you.”

For Ransom, who is doing his second drag role in a row following his recent appearance in the off-Broadway production of “My Big Gay Italian Wedding,” having Carrie played by a man underscores her outsider status.

“When you go see a drag queen in something, you expect neck-rolling and finger-snapping. In ‘Carrie,’ you don’t see nearly as much of that,” he says. “As far as my portrayal, I see her basically as an innocent, sheltered, very oppressed and repressed individual.

“I don’t see the story in either the movie or the book as a horror. I never have. I just see it as a really sad drama. I see it as more of a revenge story than anything because such horrible, horrible, horrible things happen to this girl. These people are just so preternaturally awful to her, you want her to punish them.

“One thing I will say about this script and the playwright is that it’s obvious that he loves this story and respects the story. He’s not making fun of it. There’s nothing about the show that’s saying anything bad about Carrie or that’s too over the top. There will be a lot of moments hopefully that will make people feel for the characters and see them as human beings.”

Still, it is the Halloween season, and this is Brat, a company known for producing unconventional performance pieces that both entertain and provoke. And after offering the acclaimed “Haunted Poe” experience last year, a macabre attraction celebrating the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Alltop knew he had to deliver something comparably impressive this year. When he came across the script for “Carrie,” he was immediately drawn to the challenge of how he could creatively stage such a work.

“We’re considered a small theater company. We don’t have Broadway- or off-Broadway-size budgets, yet what we love to do is take on these larger-than-life projects. When I saw this script, I knew it couldn’t be the same walk-through kind of experience as ‘Haunted Poe,’ but as a director, so many of the special effects that Jackson describes in there are so amazing, I was just fascinated with how to do them,” says Alltop.

“How do you burn a school down, how do you make scissors fly through the air, how do you crash a car? For a director to see stage directions that are impossible, I thought that would be a lot of fun to try to figure out and to also show an audience how creative a theater company can be.”
“Carrie” will treat audiences to some of those iconic movie moments. But for all its melodrama and dark themes of bullying, religious intolerance and isolation, the show promises to also heft plenty of comedic weight. Even some of the special effects, notes Ransom, are approached humorously and are never intended to overwhelm the story.

“I think there will be very haunting moments but … . there’s a ‘Rocky Horror’ element to it that I think exists,” he says. “It’s more on the comedic end than the scary but there are certainly moments that I think will give people a few chills.”
And maybe even some pause.

“I think amidst all of the fun and the fireworks and the theatrics of the piece, there is a little bit of a heartbeat and a lesson there, in that we’re all freaks and oddballs,” says Alltop. “The takeaway from that is our society would be a lot better if we can just incorporate everyone’s oddities rather than finding some group to oppress and keep down because Carrie is the ultimate outsider. She is continuously beat down and finally finds a way to rise up and strike back...

“The comedy part of it is, ‘If you had only listened, you wouldn’t be dead.’ This is something that is fun that will allow us to laugh at our high school experiences instead of being depressed by them, but there’s also some real truth in there.”

“Carrie” begins with a preview Wednesday, opens Thursday and runs through Nov. 7 at Underground Arts at the Wolf Building, 340 N. 12th St., Philadelphia. Tickets: $15 to $29. Information: www.bratproductions.org.