“Reefer Madness: The Musical” Producer Christian Campbell On Preserving Its Cult Legacy In Los Angeles

“We call it the reefer family. And once you’re in the reefer family, you can’t quit.”

Who would’ve thought that an 88 year-old propaganda film that urged parents about the dangers of marijuana - and how the mere ingesting of it will turn their kids into hysterically laughing, sex crazed, murderous fiends - would still be talked about today? The odds are pretty insane. But somehow, that’s exactly what happened.

That film, Reefer Madness, made without any hint of self-awareness of how insane it is, achieved cult status in the 70’s within the counter-culture, thanks to how absolutely absurd all of its scare tactics were. That gave way to a musical adaptation in Los Angeles in 1999, which went to Broadway in 2001, became a movie musical in 2005, and now in 2024, is back in Los Angeles in a revival.

Despite its history, the production of Reefer Madness that can currently be seen in Hollywood still manages to feel completely fresh and current. Part of that is because - sadly - the underlaying layers of the story are things that remain just as true today as it always has. The show is a cautionary tale, not about weed, but about the dangers of propaganda and following self-righteous individuals that preach all sorts of misinformation, claiming they know best. It’s something that is still so relevant, particularly within this political cycle. Of course, it’s also a biting satire that is ripe with hilarious over-exaggerations that do a brilliant job at pointing out how ridiculous the whole preaching spectacle really is. It’s - pound for pound - one of the funniest nights you can spend in Los Angeles, at the theater or otherwise.

Beyond the central message, that fresh feeling can be directly attributed to just what has been done with the material. Celebrating 25 years since that initial production, the show - reimagined for a former nightclub turned theater by director Spencer Liff - has become an immersive funhouse, of sorts. It features exceptional dancing and performances from its stars, all culminated from some of the best talent in Los Angeles. The community is a central theme to the show. The show’s producers - Christian Campbell (who starred in the original musical and the 2005 film), Kristen Bell (who starred alongside Campbell off-Broadway and in the film), and Alan Cumming (who was also in the 2005 film) among them - wanted to create a space that would remind people of just how much this city has to offer in terms of entertainment beyond what you see on the screen.  From pre-show bites to post-show hangs accompanied by top-tier jazz music, they facilitated one of the best nights out in the city.

After getting glowing reviews and a successful run, the show is sadly closing next Sunday, October 6th. If you are anywhere near Los Angeles whatsoever, we fully suggest cancelling your plans and getting tickets.

We recently spoke to producer Christian Campbell about the show, what its legacy means to him, and all of the work that went into this new production.

I went into this show completely blind, and was blown away by the layers. That it wasn’t just this weed musical. Is this something common that you’ve heard?

Yeah, it’s a trojan horse of a show. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, right? So you don’t want to be proselytizing to people. We don’t need to feel like we’re being sermonized or anything like that. But yeah, there’s a core message that I believe in. And that’s what excited me about this show for so many years and kept me coming back for more, clearly. I think it makes for all the cast and the team a project that is easy to get up and go to work for. It’s not just fluff. You might even be helping move the progress needle forward when you’re doing what you’re doing. Mission is important.

The show is this incredibly unique thing, while also being so fun. That’s what immediately drew me into the material, because I realized “Oh, this is something special. Something that we’re not going to see again,” at least not done in this way.

Yeah, for sure. But hopefully we’ll have a future. Talks are going on right now with London and we’re looking to preserve as much of the staging and what’s been crafted by our brilliant director, Spencer Liff. He’s really taken the production to a whole new level with his brilliant choreography and his use of the space. And I think that’s another element that people are blown away by, to experience theater like that. It feels truly three-dimensional, four-dimensional, whatever you want to call it as it’s happening right there beside you.

When did you first realize that the show developed this cult following?

That was in 2014. We got approached by a couple of younger aspiring director and producer. They wanted to do a benefit concert at New World Stages in New York of Reefer Madness. And they tasked me with bringing together as much as the original cast as possible for this benefit concert. And so I went about doing that. Alan Cumming, Amy Spanger, Harry Murphy flew out, we had John Kassir there. We had multiple Ralphs’, multiple Jimmys’. The lecturer was shared by Harry and Alan. When they priced it out, they were like “We’re going to charge $100 a ticket.” And I was like “Really? For a concert reading? We’re going to be carrying our scripts in front of music stands. There’s going to be nothing to it up on the stage.”

Well, it oversold and people watched it on closed circuit televisions outside. The energy of all the people that I saw there - but also the young people - I had a lot of them coming up to me saying “I just need you to know during middle school and high school, Reefer Madness the DVD from the 2005 movie, it was this cool cult musical. We passed it around. It was OUR musical.” When I heard that, that’s sort of when the light bulb went off for me that we had a cult following and I could perhaps bring the original creative team together and we could meet that generation with a new version of Reefer Madness for them.

Bringing everyone on board this time around, was everyone on board right away to come back?

It was a quick yes. Very much so. We call it the reefer family. And once you’re in the reefer family, you can’t quit. At first it was the writers coming on board, and then [original director] Andy Fickman came on board. My wife and I are the lead producers - sort of the torch bearers - from 2014 until now. And then just before I got out to Los Angeles, I called up Kristen first. And she was an immediate “Yes, I’m on board.” Then on my drive out, I called up Alan and he was a quick yes as well. So by the time I landed in LA, the lead producers were in place. Then Paul Nygro - who was in the original cast with us and was the understudy for Ralph - he was a quick yes and became our company manager. And then Wendy Parker - who was also in the chorus in the ‘99 production - she had gone onto become an acclaimed events producer in Los Angeles, she came on board to make sure we were locked down with a venue and that she would take care of outside events, because she has an understudy of the food and beverage section of everything. So it was kind of people together this super team of people.

Where did that idea come from, doing it in this immersive space?

Well the intention was always to build out space and make it feel like a 1930’s kind of speakeasy. The way we thought of it was what would happen if the character of Mae Coleman - the madame of the Reefer Den - had moved to Paris and opened a bordello or a speakeasy. And that’s what we kind of hit on from a design perspective. That is the brilliant design - in terms of the venue - of Peter Wafer. That’s his attention to detail. And Mark Dahl is our set designer. And I think they both just worked together brilliantly on making that space pop.

But it was actually during the rehearsal process [that the immersive idea came together]. I was busy being the dusty producer. I was the foreman of the build for the space while rehearsals were happening. So I didn’t observe rehearsals at all because we only had three weeks of rehearsals and that only gave me three weeks of build time for the space. And so I was just there pretty much 18 hours a day. Until I heard a report back that during the rehearsal process, Spencer had worked it out that suddenly it was this idea of what we call the crucifix - the dance avenues, the spaces that exist in the audience - he had started playing around with that in the rehearsal room. And I was like “Okay, so we’ve got to build that now.” And that really changes everything. We’ve got to build a deck over there and a play space over there.

And so that was all a big surprise that we had to adjust for very quickly in construction. The challenges were when we originally did the business model, we expected to have a certain number of seats. And because of this brilliant idea now, we lost a good deal of seating because of it. So it was kind of a hard pill to swallow. But at the same time, I thought “It’s worthwhile. Let’s do it.” And it definitely was worthwhile because I think that was sort of the biggest discovery that we made with this. And we’re going to port that as much as possible to future productions.

And what is it like for you as a producer, having done the show so many times over the years, to now be in a new capacity and seeing it through a new lens? Tell me about how the evolution feels to you on the other side now.

Oh, I think it’s evolved. I think it’s evolved immensely for the better. This production was built on the shoulders of giants. Andy Fickman did a brilliant job directing the original production in 1999 as well as the New York production as well as the movie. For all time, that will be the bedrock of this production, Andy Fickman. But the idea of taking on a new director, though difficult, there was a point to it. Which was we wanted to be able to allow a new generation to be able to make this their own.

And Spencer Liff was a super fan of Reefer Madness. He admitted that Reefer Madness played on a loop in his college dorm room all the time. So this has been his dream production, getting to direct it. So I just felt that having fresh eyes on it, and having a fanboy love it of going on there with his choreographic brilliance just took it to an all new level where we all sit back and are like “Yeah, this is pretty amazing.”

Tell me about finding such a talented cast to carry the torch for this new generation.

The casting was incredible. We were tasking it - just for financial reasons and because we were using this as a way of really developing this show - there was no way that we were going to be able to fly actors in from New York or London. So we tasked our brilliant casting directors Michael Donovan and Richie Ferris that they could only hire local. So they put out casting and 2,500 people submitted auditions. And what you see is the cream of the crop.

There’s a lot of frustrated musical theater people here in LA, people who have come from New York or other far places. They’re here pursuing careers in TV and film, so everyone rushed to be apart of this. And also the added dynamic of having Spencer Liff as our director/choreographer meant that we’d need to have a lot of triple threats in the cast. Spencer refused to compromise on the level of dancing. So that was another real challenge for dancing.

Then another difficulty was the lecturer role in the past is its own separate role, and then Jack also played Jesus. Here we wanted to combine them into one role. There were reasons for that. We wanted to condense the show in terms of cast size, because it makes it ultimately more producible. But also we like the idea that this patriarchal power hungry, white male figure of the 1930’s would secretly want to play Jesus, because he has megalomaniac tendencies. He would also want to play Jack, because he’d be able to hit women and be evil. And he’d want to play the devil in the orgy scene so he could get all of his sick fantasies out. So we just loved this idea of combining all that.

Ultimately, it made it a real challenge to find an actor who could play all of those roles with equal weight. It was a little minute casting find to find Bryan Daniel Porter. It was a week before rehearsals that we found him. At one point, they were like “You might have to play the lecturer Christian.” I was like “No! I cannot do this. I have to produce this show.” Thank god for Bryan Daniel Porter. He came and is just spectacular.

Tell me, what was it like this past Friday, when Sins O’ the Flesh put on a shadow cast of the 2005 movie, that you starred in of course?

I’d never seen it done before. I know there had been shadow cast versions of the show before done in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. But this is all of our first time, except for [writer] Dan Studney. So working with Sins O’ the Flesh, Austin Fresh, who works on our backstage crew, first brought in Rocky Horror. And then Austin presented us with the idea that they could maybe do a shadow cast of Reefer Madness. And I was like “Duh. Let’s do it.” It was great. I thought they were fantastic.

And you got to do the Brownie Song.

And I did. Oh boy. I have to say, they told me to hump the brownie. That was NOT my choice. I need you to know that. (Laughs).

But that was the visuals. You had to match it.

Exactly!

So sadly, the show is closing next Sunday. But tell me, how do you feel about this new chapter and what it means for the legacy of the show?

This was the 25th anniversary of when the show first premiered. I think this is just a beautiful chapter to our voyage, so to speak. We made incredible discoveries about it. I think it was really good for theater lovers and people who aren’t theater people. We had so many people come to the show who just randomly were brought by a friend or thought “Maybe I’ll give that a try.” And now they get it. They’re like “Now I understand why theater’s amazing.” For me, a really important part of this is getting to connect the LA community back to understanding that there can be great theater here. We need to do a better job to nurture it. That means not only finding new audiences, but people getting out and supporting theater where it is. But we did put on a pretty damn good show. We are super proud of it. We definitely proud of it. People are going to remember it without a doubt.