Anyone who has bee reading my reviews for any extended amount of time knows I am not the biggest fan of experimental theatre and prefer more traditional narratives, so I was a little anxious going into the original work The Lilium Club at the University of Utah put on by Open Door Productions but fortunately it ended up being a bloody good time at the theater.

This original play is written by Morgan Champine and it shows a lot of potential for her skills at crafting characters and establishing tone. The easy comparison for this show is Heathers: The Musical (a show I love) and maybe even more the Heathers movie. Heathers is set in high school where The Lilium Club is in a private college but it has similar characters with Hope being a maniacal group leader much like Heather Chandler. The difference is Hope is causing chaos not for power or control but because she’s bored and not intellectually challenged enough at her school. Of course, this isn’t an excuse for murdering multiple people but it is an interesting motivation especially in the world of devices and nearly constant available entertainment available to the youth of today.

In the play Hope invites her schoolmates into a secret organization called the Lilium Club where they dress in togas and recite pledges to each other. Really the blood oaths on the first evening would have been the first hint for me to get out of there but they all agree. Then things get increasingly unhinged as Hope justifies her first victim as someone who is a sleezy student who assaulted one of the group members. I won’t spoil what she does with said victim but is quite over-the-top and shocking but in a fun way.

Obviously the material for this show will not be for everyone but Champine gets the right mixture of camp and sincerity from her actors (she directs and writes.) Abbie Graham is wickedly confident in her portrayal of Hope. One can imagine she would be an extremely intimidating person to try and oppose or contradict, and few members of the club do until it is too late. I also enjoyed Alyssa Miller as Hope’s girlfriend Guinevere and Jason Hogue as the beleaguered James who is most manipulated by these women.

As far as room for improvement there is a sequence where the group takes a psychedelic tea and I think Champine could have had more fun with the antics of that scene. It was pretty tame considering how wild the carnage gets later on. No need to hold back. Also it does seem like the kind of material more suited to a one act play rather than the longer 90 minute format. It is also not even trying for any kind of realism as the body pileup would certainly be noticed but having the dean of the school be an early victim may be pushing credulity even for something over-the-top like this. I might have kept it just within the secretive club.

All that said Champine shows a lot of promise as an emerging playwright and the students put on a bloody good time with The Lilium Club. It is playing at the black box theater in the Performing Arts Building of the University of Utah through Feb 8th and tickets can be purchased here.

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