WEBF at Halloween: Spooky Musicals you might not know

This Halloween, forget Young Frankenstein, The Addams Family, and Sweeney Todd, let’s discuss five of the spookiest musicals you might not have heard of. The afterlife is rife in these lesser-known shows featuring vampires, zombies, demons and more.

Zombie Prom

Off-Broadway’s Zombie Prom is Halloween’s answer to Grease. Set in an American high school in the 1950s, good girl Toffee is forced by her parents to break up with her rebel boyfriend, Jonny. This leads him to commit suicide, leaving Toffee feeling heartbroken and guilty. She mourns her lost beau, hearing his voice wherever she goes, until one day he reappears back from the dead! She and the other students and staff attempt to navigate high school life and organising prom with a zombie in their midst in this rock and roll ghoulish show.

Lestat

Lestat, a young Frenchman, gets more than he bargained for when he moves to Paris. Shortly after moving and falling in love with his friend Nicolas, Lestat is attacked by a vampire named Magnus, turning him into a vampire. Lestat struggles to cope with his new form and attempts to navigate life as an immortal with a desire for normality and companionship. With music provided by Elton John, Lestat sadly failed to put a spell on critics and received a haunting reception on Broadway.

Frank Wildhorn’s Dracula the Musical

No stranger to a darker adaptation following 1990’s Jekyll and Hyde, Frank Wildhorn devised the music for Dracula the Musical, based on the novel by Bram Stoker. An English lawyer, Jonathan Harker, meets the peculiar Count Dracula in Transylvania to finalise the sale of a house in London. Whilst in Dracula’s castle, things turn strange and Dracula’s thirst for blood takes him to new places… A hair-raising classic gets a musical makeover.

Evil Dead

The Evil Dead movie franchise became a stage musical in 2003, earning it praise as “the next The Rocky Horror Show” from The New York Times. Evil Dead mixes elements and characters from all five Evil Dead films. Classic horror is portrayed in a comedic way, following five college students who find themselves required to save the world from evil forces during a weekend staying in a cabin in the woods. Some versions of this show have included an audience splatter zone, so this hilarious musical is not for the faint hearted!

Jasper in Deadland

Before Hadestown, Jasper In Deadland turned the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into a musical with a modern teenage twist. In the living world, Jasper is struggling to fit in with all but his friendship with Agnes. One night their friendship becomes romance however, by morning, Agnes is gone having left only the instruction for him to meet her at a cliff. At the cliff, Agnes is nowhere to be seen and only a portal to the world below is found. Of course, Jasper enters it and finds himself in Deadland. This hellish musical was most recently performed by the Arts Ed Theatre Company in July 2022.

What other obscure and sinister musicals do you know, Besties?