Cannibal! feeds on itself at Dad’s Garage
It’s not surprising that Dad’s Garage Theatre would want to revisit Cannibal! The Musical. A decade ago, the company’s original adaptation of the no-budget musical by “South Park” co-creator Trey Parker helped put the fledgling Inman Park playhouse on the map. Cannibal! debuted opposite the Alliance Theatre’s Broadway-bound Elton John musical Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida (subsequently shortened to just Aida), and The New York Times Magazine ran a wry little info box about the two shows. One of Cannibal’s characters even played with a pyramid-shaped toy, in a shout-out to Aida’s famously glitchy mechanical pyramid.
The program for Dad’s 10th anniversary remount of Cannibal! The Musical says that the original adaptation by Sean Daniels and Matthew Stanton has been further adapted by Mike Katinsky and George Faughnan, the show’s director. I saw the new Cannibal! Saturday night and it struck me as drastically different. There’s an all-new cast, a completely different set and different approach to the big laughs. In 1998, the Confederate war-veteran/Cyclops didn’t just squirt fluid from his empty eye socket, he doused a “splash zone” of people in the audience. The new Cannibal! keeps its fluids onstage, mostly.