Yuletide at the Black Lagoon

When The Creature from the Black Lagoon was originally released in cinemas in 1954, it was a 3D movie. The Off the Wall Theatre pays tribute to that fact this  holiday season with a staged musical adaptation of the movie that is fully three-dimensional. 

Not exclusively a parody of the 1954 classic horror film, Dale Gutzman's The Creature from the Black, Black Lagoon is a parody of 1950s monster movies featuring such tunes as "White Christmas," "Moonlight Becomes You," and "Pagan Love Song." Sounds fun.

The show is evidently a replacement for the originally schedule production of Cole for Christmas. When that fell through, Off the Wall elected to carve this parody into a holiday show with token references to the holidays. The resulting show just might be the most novel holiday fare of the season. 

The musical is set in the heart of the amazon on December 24th somewhere in the 50's. Jeremy Welter musters his best Richard Carlson in the role of Dr. David Reed. 

Instead of Julie Adams/Ginger Stanley in the role of creature bait Kay Lawrence, we get Mark Hagen as creature bait Kay Laverne. The Gill-man falls in love with her in a production guaranteed to be every bit as kitschy as it sounds. Nice to see Dale Gutzman trying a new mutation for the holidays. This looks interesting. And, of course, anything that looks interesting like this could turn out to be very, very bad . . . or very, very good. In any case, I'm looking forward to something new for the holidays this year. At the end of this week, I will be going to the Pabst again for more of the same this holiday season, but I will cast a hopeful glance in the direction of Off the Wall on my way in to that theatre. 

Dale Gutzman's The Creature from the Black, Black Lagoon runs December 18th through 31st at the Off The Wall Theatre on 127 East Wells Street. For ticket reservations, call 414-484-8874.