Spider Baby the Musical
2:30 PM, Sat., 2/28
8:30 PM, Sat., 2/28
4:00 PM, Sun. 3/1
10:00 PM, Fri., 3/6
5:30 PM, Sat., 3/7
Dianna’s North (826 N. Fulton St.)
$7
Spider Baby the musical. A horror rock show guaranteed to titillate and disturb. Based on the cult classic by Jack Hill (Foxy Brown, Coffey) Spider Baby the musical tells the story of the Merrye family. Each member suffers from the same degenerative mental disorder which causes a loss of impulse control. Some distant relatives want to institutionalize them and sell their land. Spider Baby the musical deals with the extreme measures the family takes to
stay together. Come see the hard rocking horror fest that the Bakersfield Californian described as “Sexy, scary, fun.”
Enrique Acosta
Bakersfield, California
www.myspace.com/spiderbabythemusical
Genre: Musical Theatre
Rating: R 60 minutes
Not for children
Latecomers permitted within 15 Minutes
Filed under: 2/28 Saturday, 3/1 Sunday, 3/6 Friday, 3/7 Saturday, Dianna's North
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17 Responses to “Spider Baby the Musical”
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* The Rogue celebrates the freedom of expression and we encourage you to review as many shows as you can catch at Rogue 2009. However, "flaming" (i.e. personal insults, name calling, etc) are not reviews and any such comments will be deleted.
February 27th, 2009 at 4:17 am
Question…is this right, or is the Rogue Map correct? Rogue map has this show on Friday at 10pm, when I’d love to see it.
Anyone?
February 27th, 2009 at 9:09 am
There are no shows at Dianna’s North tonight (Fri. Feb.27th).[in spite of the mistake in the Rogue Map.
The first showing of SpiderBaby is at the same place…2:30 on Saturday the 28th. (Conveniently located right after The Blake & Baba Show—-EverPlugginBlake
February 27th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
THANK YOU, Blake.
I’ll follow the online Rogue Grid, then…
February 28th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
I know that no one put a gun to my head and it was my choice to see this but I found it horrid! I rank this as, “The Love Guru” of the Rogue Festival! An interesting premise that I found poorly executed and mind-numbingly bad! A root canal would be preferable to sitting through this again. Thumbs down!
February 28th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
The Bakersfield paper described this as ’sexy, scary, fun.’ Maybe there were two versions of this show??
I want to change my usual pace and start with positives about this show: the kids can sing okay.
Okay, that’s about it. This show might MIGHT have worked as a rock opera with no spoken dialogue, because the acting is directionless and the worst kind of high school amateurish possible. Some of them sing well, but there’s no set, the lighting is sparse and can’t help, the sound is poorly mixed…I sat near the lighting booth and was much more entranced by the screen saver on the laptop than this show.
It needed/needs MUCH more work. A director, a set designer, a costume designer, and a cast of actors. Other than that? Well, the girls ARE a bit sexy.
See? I’m trying to finish on a positive note as well.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:18 am
I found myself really liking this show. Maybe because I’m not much of a theatre person I found the minimal sets and production appealing. I think it was ambitious to create a show like this, and even more ambitious to bring a musical to the Rogue Festival and try to stage it within the confines of the schedule. It’s cheesy, a little sexy, the singing is uneven (with both good and less good singers) the songs are uneven (with both good and less good). It’s not ready for Broadway, or off Broadway, but it is what I like so much about the Rogue Festival.–the chance to see a show that people have obviously worked hard on and really care about that is entertaining– and you may not get to see anywhere else.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:59 pm
We had a great time at Spider Baby. Really enjoyed the music—and I agree that I did not miss fancy costumes or sets. I got a kick out of the fact that the 2 boxes were used so well. Ralph was especially well played! Thanks for coming up for the Rogue.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:21 am
These folks from Bakersfield have taken inspiration from a cheesy 1960’s horror flick about a vampire like family with a degenerative mental condition and turned it into a musical that is part horror and part Rocky Horror. While it’s been abbreviated for the Rogue and is sometimes uneven, I found it very entertaining, original and unique. Some great songs and performances, some less than great, but overall, very worthwhile seeing and appealing in unexpected ways.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 am
Not too bad but it could have been better. The singing wasn’t top-notch but passable; the actors/singers, especially Cousin Peter as the narrator, should enunciate better, and the music sometimes overpowered the vocals.
Not truly “sexy, scary, fun” as quoted by the Bakersfield Californian, more like “sexual, violent, and darkly humorous.”
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Well, what can I say? Not a whole lot as this show was the worst show I have seen since I have been coming to the Rogue. Honestly, I was really really excited to see this show because the description looked VERY interesting and the picture was definitely appealing to me. The marketing for this show was fabulous, I’ll give them that.
Overall, the singing was okay, the acting was horrific and the music wasn’t catchy and the singers did not keep up with the tempo of the music at all. I think this show needs a lot of work before they tour around California.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:48 am
Certainly uneven performances but overall a really fun show to watch. It’s not for everyone. In the program they give a shout out to Phantom of the Paradise and Repo the genetic opera. Take that into account before you go. Ask yourself. Do I like dark comedies? Do I like cheesy horror film? Do I like cheesy lyrics? If you said yes to any you’d probably like this show.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:13 am
[cross-posted on fresnobeehive.com]
Staging anything is hard. You don’t even know until you’ve done it. I’m talking about the organizational side.
You see, I was about to suggest that a live band would make this show more interesting.
Enrique mentioned an Alice Cooper concert.[Enrique mentioned it in his posting on fresnobeehive.com]
Imagine this show with a live band…like Rocky Horror was done over at the Severance recently…but with them more an intrigal part of it costume-wise etc.
BUT
BUT
BUT
Then….you’re asking this guy to *find* musicians, train musicians and then schelp them around along with all the other cast.
All I’m saying is….wow, you can go to the Pantages and see a wonderful show. They spend MILLIONS.
Doing a very grass-roots production …without the MILLIONS
is really taxing to the imagination and stamina of the producers.
This leads, as we’ve seen, to very very small-scale theater (maybe the best choice? I dunno.) like the one and two person touring shows we see at the Rogue.
!!What do you do with the people who have a more Cecil D. Demille dream?!!
I applaud Enrique and crew for their valiant attempt.
I’m not sure I can say their show was a pleasure for me,
but I admire their balls and hope that they have some marvelous “lightbulb suddenly flickering on” ideas that will
help them turn their grand ambitions into some grand shows in the future.
p.s. I’m not really sure what good comments are that seem to revel in blasting a show. Yes, I agree weak points can be pointed out. Yes, I agree that one can say that they didn’t enjoy the show. BUT, I detect a certain amount of glee and self-satisfaction in some posters in finding fault that doesn’t seem to be helpful to the artist nor the audience members trying to make a choice of shows.
(Alternately, I do understand that a “man, this is the greatest show EVER” writing on every single show is also less than enlightening.)
March 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The singing was certainly better than the acting! I can’t believe this is a touring show, when some of the actors didn’t seem to even know their lines.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The Rogue is our first stop as we build a tour. The cast has only been together a few months. We are building the show into a touring show. So, comments that help us build the show are greatly appreciated.
March 8th, 2009 at 2:39 am
I enjoyed this show much more than any of my root canals. Yes, there could be some tightening here and there…well, I could say the same about myself. I had a good time and am glad I attended. I wish the best for Enrique and the cast.
March 9th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
It wasn’t what I was expecting, for sure. More silly than sexy, more cheesy and schlocky than scary, but I’d say that at some parts I had fun. I was scared for the cast when the microphones gave out completely at the performance I attended, but I was very impressed when they kept going like nothing happened, and when I found I could still hear them perfectly well. Most of the cast has powerful enough voices that it just didn’t matter.
The spider game thing by which the girl kills her victims was just too silly, and large parts of the plot left me wanting to roll my eyes. The songs try to be rock and roll at times, but the music was too quiet, even before the mics went out. The show aspired to be outrageous but fell short, and I think that making the music louder and harder, and maybe even some more dramatic lighting in the right places (strobes? colored lights?) might go a long way towards making it more energetic and rockin’.
I was expecting the children to be more menacing and less innocent, too. The brother character was kind of entertaining, and it was fun watching him make faces and stare at people. The two sisters were good singers, as was their caretaker. The show just needs work, and probably needs to describe itself as “campy” or “humorous”, because people who came for “scary” seem to be let down.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I never imagined this would be anything but campy and humorous. After all it is based on an uber-cheezwhiz train wreck from the 60’s that wasn’t expected to be scary even then….
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058606/
…after all, one of the characters is named Schlocker!
I think strobe lighting would be super…and all the actors (and I’m sure they will as they continue to perform this) would benefit from pulling out any and all stops. I think they’ve got something good in their hands and if they keep working with it that it will be a gem.