Looking for a silly, stupid way to spend an evening? You’ll have a magical time with OFC Creations’ “Hocus Pocus: The Drag Parody Musical.”
The show’s world premiere was on Friday evening at the Old Farm Cafe theater center, and is running for the next couple weeks on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday matinees (their final show is on Halloween). Tickets are $35 apiece, and there is an ASL-interpreted show on Oct. 22. My friends and I ended up rushing into the theater — which was remarkably nice, especially given its facade is part of a strip mall — on Saturday night right before the show was about to begin. I was in no way prepared for the sorcery and shenanigans up ahead.
To attempt to sum up “Hocus Pocus: The Drag Parody Musical” requires two words total: wine mom. Not only was the humor rooted in Wendy Williams and Drag Race jokes, but the crowd was filled to the brim with middle-aged women, drunkenly hooting and hollering with their OFC specialty “autumn mimosas” and “very bloody bubblies” as I attempted to make sense of the threadbare plot.
The parody is as raunchy as you would expect for a show promoted with the phrase “we spell witches with a capital B,” but it’s certainly spicier than its original Disney-based counterpart. The three Sanderson sisters (Mary, Sarah, and Winifred), prior to their demise in puritanical Salem, put a curse on the town which includes their resurgence in the world once their black candle is lit by a virgin. Their goal, once they are released: suck out the soul of a child to complete a spell that will return — respectively, as you hear a million times throughout the show — their taste buds, sex drive, and talent.
The targeted children in question include Mick, the California dudebro and resident virgin, Ally, the cluelessly-annoying northeastern hyper-feminist stereotype who on occasion traipses around the stage in a bikini as a horny hallucination, and Janie, Mick’s little sister, whose sole personality trait is being a sugar-fueled nightmare that also smokes joints at the ripe old age of what I can only assume is 10. She’s from California, guys. It’s funny.
If you can’t tell from this brief synopsis, if you’re looking for a show fueled by wit rather than jokes about the lowest-possible hanging fruit, you’ll be hard pressed to find it here. However, what the production lacks in writing, it makes up for in talent. The actors are certainly vocally talented, even if their backing orchestrations leave some numbers feeling sparse, and their dancing is nothing to scoff at either. In addition, the set, lighting, and costumes are incredibly well-constructed and utilized throughout the show.
Some highlights include Nazareth graduate Ian Patterson, who plays Mary — I wasn’t expecting the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous vocals in this show to be part of an “I want” song by a drag queen witch backed by a chorus line of anthropomorphic food — and UR sophomore Gabriel Pierce, who delivers all of his lines with more panache than a man oscillating between playing every possible side character and having his hand stuck up a puppet cat’s ass should possibly have. An easy runner-up: Penfield High School junior Danielle Walker saying the phrase, “You’re pussywhipped and you haven’t even seen it yet” while dressed in an angel Halloween costume. Of all the “what the fuck” lines in this show — I didn’t even talk about the Michael Jackson pedophile subplot — that one actively had me screeching along with the crowd.
My recommendation: Show up tipsy, belly-laugh with some vodka aunts, and have a spirited night.
