No movie is safe from a musical reinterpretation. Broadway has been dazzled with reinventions like The Producers, Sunset Boulevard, and Death Becomes Her, while off-Broadways got weirder with offerings like Heathers, Teeth, and Little Shop of Horrors.
But how do you turn The Exorcist, a truly iconic horror movie about demons and sacrilege, packed with practical effects that seem impossible to recreate on stage, into a musical comedy?
For writer Michael Shaw Fisher, you come at it from a lot of angles. Inspired by the madcap humor and fourth-wall-breaking of John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Fisher created Exorcistic: The Musical. Rather than playing like a straight-up parody (like Teeth), Fisher not only recreates scenes from William Friedkin’s famous film, but also presents them as a play-within-a-play. Confused? Oh, just you wait.
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