From South Park (18 seasons and counting) to Team America: World Police, Trey Parker’s provocative, politically-incorrect brand of hilarity is as vital as ever. There’s nothing he wouldn’t dare satirize. In 2011, he fulfilled a lifelong dream and conquered Broadway with The Book of Mormon, winning an impressive 9 Tony Awards. Cut to 2015, Director/Co-Writer Christopher Bond, who brought us the amazing Evil Dead: The Musical and Night of the Living Dead Live stage productions, has adapted Parker’s directorial debut, Cannibal! The Musical. It’s presently having its World Premiere in Toronto, Canada at the Panasonic Theatre, followed by a U.S. tour soon after.

Bond once again finds that impeccable balance of staying true to the source material yet at the same time expanding on Parker’s wacky universe. The show is blessed with a terrific ensemble cast including the likes of scene-stealer Marty Adams (Saw IV, The Barrens) and Mike ‘Nug’ Nahrgang (Evil Dead: The Musical, Night of the Living Dead Live). Each performer juggles their multiple roles with gusto. Cannibal! The Musical sees Bond take another cinematic cult classic to the stage, packed with freshness and creativity, without forgetting the foundation that’s made these properties so enduring to fans. This is an absolute must-see whenever it hits your town! This is theatre at its most unhinged fun.

I had the opportunity to chat with members of the cast and creative team to discuss the show and its genesis.

B-D: Where did the idea of adapting Cannibal! The Musical all start?

CHRISTOPHER BOND: Trevor (Martin) and I were looking for something to collaborate together on. We were working on Evil Dead (The Musical) together and become quick friends, realizing we kind of have a unique comic styling. Trevor is the smart joke, I’m the butt joke and together we make lots of good jokes. There was this great audience in Toronto that was really hot on Evil Dead: The Musical and we discovered Cannibal! The Musical. It’s great on its own but we really wanted to take it to the next level. It wasn’t a full blown musical. It needed more music, needed to kind of get some structure. We called up the Trey Parker camp and said: “Hey, we want to make this its own thing, make it a full-fledged Broadway-style musical. It took some talking and negotiating but at the end of the day they were like: “Yah”. This was the first thing Trevor and I collaborated on. We wrote the script, as well as maybe three new songs. We got the approval of Jason McHugh (Producer, as well as played Frank Miller in the film). He’s been our point man. He sends everything up the chain for us which is kind of cool and sneaky. It’s been great. We got the green light then all of a sudden we got a: “Hey guys, you know what? Trey and Matt are working on this other musical and we’ll circle back”. Who knew that would be The Book of Mormon, the biggest theatre success ever. It’s an amazing show. They circled back and said: “Cannibal…you guys want to do that?” Years have passed so we blew the dust off the old script and realized it needed some fine tuning, needed some more music. Long story short, here we are at the Panasonic.

TREVOR MARTIN (Co-Writer, plays Bell, Juror 1, The Undertaker, Prison Guard): Our original intention was to have this really small, comedic cast with a couple of rocks and some cowboys hats. As we were growing, building the songs, we started realizing this is a musical. This is like a musical, musical so we need legit musical theatre people. Aaron Eyre is our other Co-Writer. He was the Musical Director of Evil Dead: The Musical. He composed a lot of the songs and really filled out the existing songs that were in the movie. When we were casting, we wanted musical theatre chops and comedic chops and we’re split 50-50 with those camps. The musical theatre people are funny and the comedic people can sing and dance a little bit. Enough to keep up anyway. Everyone has meshed together really well. It’s been kind of magic.

LIAM TOBIN (Alfred Packer): Jason McHugh, who works with Matt and Trey all the time, came in for a week and kind of worked with us as well in saying: “Yah okay, let’s keep that bit but you know maybe that one isn’t working as well.” It was fun to kind of collaborate and create a new work.

B-D: What was it about Cannibal! The Musical that attracted you to take this project on?

CHRISTOPHER BOND: I saw the South Park movie and it blew my mind. The music from that inspired the music that became Evil Dead: The Musical. When you finally discover Trey Parker, you go on a little Trey Parker pilgrimage: “What this? BASEketball. What’s this? Orgazmo.” Then you finally get to Cannibal which is where it all started. It’s underground, crazy, hilarious, kitschy and campy. I was turned on by it right away.

TREVOR MARTIN: When you watch Cannibal, you can see the beginning. You hear some South Park voices. Movies aren’t silly anymore. They usually take a kind of more serious bent, or it’s very satirical. This is just a fun, silly movie that’s got that comedic sensibility we grew up with and miss.

MIKE ‘NUG’ NAHRGANG (Miller, The Judge, Frenchy, Convict): I’ve owned maybe four copies of this movie in my lifetime and it’s always been stolen from me. Whoever I show it to is like: “Could I borrow that?” and it never comes back. The movie makes me laugh so much. When I first saw South Park, I wanted to know everything so that’s how I found Cannibal, Orgazmo and all that stuff.

B-D: What was the approach to this stage adaptation?

TIM PORTER (Noon, Loutzenheiser, The Preacher, The Cyclops,
Cherub 2): It’s a bit of a take on the cult fame of the movie. We play on the stuff that’s kind of cheesy (in the movie) but at the same time, pay such homage. They (Bond and Martin) obviously love the movie.

LIAM TOBIN: We’ve built on what’s there, as opposed to replacing anything. So a lot of the stuff is straight out of the movie but there are some new elements that are a lot of fun too.

B-D: What were the challenges in bringing Cannibal! The Musical to the stage?

MIKE ‘NUG’ NAHRGANG: While it is a movie musical, a stage musical has to have a logical intermission point and a few songs here and there plus serve several functions. The movie doesn’t have some of those things. It doesn’t have a logical place to have an intermission so that got added to the show. While there are 7 songs in the movie, there are 12 or 13 songs in our show. Aaron Eyre, Trevor Martin and Chris Bond put together some songs and incorporated some lines from the movie into the songs. Lines from The Judge, when they sentence Packer to be hung; I actually full-on sing those lines. It always has to be a little bigger, little better, go a little further. It’s not necessarily Evil Dead. I don’t think we need a splatter zone in every show but there’s some stuff like that here. Fans of Cannibal who loved the gore: there’s a little bit of the gore. There wasn’t much in the movie to begin with but there is some.

TREVOR MARTIN: We’ve taken situations and moments that were scenes and turned them into big songs. We didn’t want to just do the movie on stage. There’s no point. We want to make it fresh, completely different spin. This was his (Trey Parker’s) first movie. The career trajectory of Trey Parker and Matt Stone has gone a lot more irreverent, a lot saucier. So we’ve incorporated that kind of sensibility, more of an edge. Now the bar has been heightened or lowered, depending on your perspective. We wanted to bring it in line with 2015 expectations of what this is going to be.

TIM PORTER: You can do pretty much anything on film. In the film, they did a really good job of being really low budget and making a lot of stuff happen. Even if it doesn’t look as realistic necessarily, they stage things so cleverly in this show that they’ll take people by surprise like the horse and The Green River.

LIAM TOBIN: They’ve been pretty inventive with a lot of the set pieces. It’s doing everything that we can with the things that are possible, as well as finding fun and inventive ways to have alternatives that still create the same results.

CHRISTOPHER BOND: Although we’re in the Panasonic and stuff are pretty slick, we still resort to some very amazing fromage to make magic on stage. The mountains and horse are there. Everything that’s iconic from the film is in our presentation plus we’ve added our own stuff, explore the characters a little bit. We kind of barked up a few different trees that are kind of touched upon in the film, go the extra mile and just made it a full musical theatre experience.

TREVOR MARTIN: The scale of this is so much grander than what we originally imagined. It’s a technically-heavy show.

CHRISTOPHER BOND: Unfortunately it’s been 7 years but we’re putting on the show I think we always dreamed of it being, as opposed to something small. We’re giving Cannibal the grand treatment, something spectacular.

For more information on Cannibal! The Musical, go to www.cannibalonstage.com.