The Chapel Theatre’s “Plate O’Shrimp” Recasts “Repo Man” as “Punk as Fuck” Musical Theater

The Repo Man cometh.

Plate O' Shrimp (Courtesy of Dug Martel)

After cutting his teeth on daft, hit-laden, nightclub-packing parodies from local impresarios Jeffery Wonderful (Hot Gun) and Steve Coker (Vampire Werewolf Cheerleaders from Outer Space) over the past decade, Dug Martel began casting about for a jukebox pastiche of his own. Soon enough, he recognized the potential of rebooting the 1984 cult classic Repo Man toward an all-singing, all-cursing extravaganza with a live band tackling that legendary soundtrack of timeless punk anthems.

If anything, Martel was surprised that nobody had attempted a theatrical extrapolation of the underground mainstay before. And, as auditions began three years ago for Plate O’Shrimp (name taken from mechanic Miller’s signature soliloquy regarding aliens and the collective unconsciousness), he was increasingly bewildered when prospective cast members confused his source material with goth-tinged millennial singalong horror flick Repo! The Genetic Opera.

“This kind of drives me nuts,” he admits. “I’ve never seen that movie. I’d never even heard of the movie until I started talking about this with people. It’s fucking Repo Man!”

Continuing on from 2019′s largely sold-out debut run of shows, Martel has incorporated new actors and musicians, but, he says, there were no thoughts of changing venue from Milwaukie’s Chapel Theatre. Prior experience stringing lights for Corrin DeTorres’ TriptheDark dance troupe led Martel to serve DeTorres and her partner as house tech once they’d finished renovating the newish creative space and performance hub.

With that in mind, the remarkably faithful given budgetary constraints adaptation that Martel penned with friend John Trause was specifically designed to utilize every aspect of the former religious sanctuary’s eccentric interiors as an extension of the central rectangular stage.

Next Sunday’s final matinee will likely be the last Plate O’Shrimp for some time. While he does hope to film an upcoming performance, Martell cannot imagine ever using a different location, much less touring the play. More to the point, he’s already written follow-up project Fighting Words, an original yarn steeped in grunge, martial arts and a bar owner’s righteous vengeance against the mob, although the timeline for mounting that production will likely be determined by ticket sales for his current effort.

Busily prepping POS’s second weekend of shows, the director sat down with WW to speak about the ever-present speed bumps DIY financing and the less-expected troubles encountered when attempting to kick-start this latest joyride.

Plate O' Shrimp (Courtesy of Dug Martel)

WW: How’d this all come about?

Dug Martel: It’s actually the second time done we’ve done Plate O’Shrimp. In 2019, I’d been working with Steve Coker and the Funhouse on a lot of jukebox musicals and started thinking about directing one myself. It’d be cool to do a musical, right? And, oh man, Repo Man has such a fucking awesome soundtrack, one of the best ever.

It’s just a mixtape of great L.A. punk songs. There’s Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag doing “TV Party,” Fear’s “Let’s Have a War,” Circle Jerks’ “Coup d’Etat.” Iggy Pop does the title song, which is fantastic. You have the Plugz, and they’re singing “Hombre Secreto,” “Secret Agent Man” in español.

There’s, like, 16 songs in the show, eight songs per act, pretty much a song every few minutes. We use them all except one (“Comedic” by the Circle Jerks), and I keep thinking about how to fit that one.

How do you mean?

Every song moves the plot. It has to fit the scene, you know? Or tell about the characters. Like, this Ramones song “Zero Zero UFO” is sung by the girl playing Leila, who has this organization to expose the truth about aliens. She’s talking about UFOs when the song comes in: “It landed in a field in Idaho/Where it landed I don’t know/It did not look like it came from Japan/And out of the dark walked a strange man.”

So, when the punk dies in the convenience store and blames society…

Yesss! That leads in to Johnny Thunders’ “Born to Lose.” Everybody’s all shot up and, then, [mimics guitar riff] boww bhow bnow bnow bnow bnnooow. “That’s the way it goes/The city is so cold.”

Sometimes, the songs are a little random, but they still work where we fit them. During Miller’s monologue, right after “the more you drive, the less intelligent you are,” he goes, “You know who else never drove anywhere ever? Pablo Picasso.” And, then, the music starts. That’s the sequel there. Miller’s a weirdo, so of course he’d sing a song about Pablo Picasso never being called an asshole. I play Miller, and during that song, I call the audience an asshole. And they fucking love it.

That’s what we do in this show. We berate the fuck out of the audience. Bud calls them assholes. He calls them fucks. He calls them pieces of shit. We call them homeless. We call them winos. They eat it fucking up. I tell the actors, bring you boss to the show, scream “fuck you!” in their face, and you won’t get fired. The audience fucking loves it when we treat them like shit. It’s hilarious. Truly surreal.

So, the lines about hating ordinary people?

Yes! He directs that all to the audience. Hey, look at these assholes. I hate ’em. He’s doing that right to the audience, and they’re laughing their asses off. It’s solid gold. That scene goes to the bar where the punks pop up from behind the counter and reveal they’ve held the guy up. That leads to their introduction song, which is “Fuck You” by the Subhumans.

An actual bar?

Yes. It isn’t open during the show because we have scenes at the bar, but, yes, drinking is definitely encouraged.

Always helps the audience…

It’s an open policy backstage now. We’re all relaxing. We’re drinking. We’re smoking doobies. Back there, we’re all Repo Men.

Plate O' Shrimp (Courtesy of Dug Martel )

Same actors as 2019?

A little more than half were the same as before. I had to find some new people, and that ran into trouble; like, we had auditions where no one showed up. I mean, I know a lot of actors, I asked a lot of them, but I just couldn’t find anyone. Eventually, I just had to go out and find people. Like, one of the regulars from this bar I worked at for 12 years ended up playing Duke, the king of the punks, and Oly. Most people play multiple characters in this show.

Who’s your Harry Dean Stanton?

A guy named Todd Robinson.

Oh? Nice! He’s been in everything from Grimm to First Cow to Leverage/Librarians to…

…a Red Fang video! Yeah, he does mostly film. In 2019, when he heard about my show and said he’d fucking gladly play Bud, he hadn’t done live theater for, like, 20 years! He came back to the stage for this show to play fucking Bud from Repo Man! Oh my God, he’s so great. You got to find people who love the movie, right? They’ll be so much more dedicated to the role.

[Repo Man] has such a cool following, anyway. If the actor really loves the film, loves his character, it almost doesn’t matter if they’ve had much experience. Luckily, Todd had…a lot of experience.

And your Emilio Estevez?

Otto? A guy named Ethan who doesn’t do a whole lot of acting. He was in something before Plate O’Shrimp (I think a Shakespeare thing, not sure), but I know him because he’s a boyfriend of a co-worker. It’s always super DIY. I did pretty much all of this myself.

What about the Chevy? Did you have a real car?

My friend Bill Holznagel’s a puppeteer, and he built this little car. The door opens. The trunk opens. You can sit in it. If you remember the movie, the car flies off at the end. I’m not going to spoil anything by telling you how, but the car really does fly. Believe me, people fucking love that. Oh God, it’s good. With the music and shit, it is epic as fuck.

You should sell models as merch?

I wish! Can’t afford it, bud. Plate O’Shrimp has cost me a lot of money. Hopefully I can at least break even, but we’ll have to sell a lot of tickets for that. I’m just trying not to go homeless because of this show.

Plate O' Shrimp (Courtesy of Dug Martel )

Did the band change?

Yesss. I was pulling them together at the same time as the actors. The band blows my mind. Let me tell you, as the director, trying to coordinate all this shit. It was really fucking stressful for a while. Holy crap, that was rough, but, man, they are great. They’re just amazing.

Only one of the band members stayed on from the previous shows, so I like did searches on Facebook for local artists. I got a bass player who showed up to rehearsal acting like a fucking crazy person and freaking out all the actors. I fire him, find another, and then I lose my guitar player. Carl Hinds, he started the School of Rock up and down the West Coast, was our replacement bass player, and he said he could switch between bass and guitar. So, OK, dude, fucking awesome, let’s fucking see if we can do this.

And, then, my drummer breaks his clavicle in a bicycle accident. We open in like two fucking weeks, and he’s having surgery. What the fuck am I going to do? Basically, I couldn’t find anyone else and had to be, like, “Dude, do you think you could drum with one arm?” So, my bassist is switching between bass and guitar. My keyboard player’s playing the bass parts when Carl’s on guitar. And, we have a one-handed fucking drummer.

I mean, this is punk rock, dude. The Chapel Theatre’s next door to a recording studio, and the owner was like, “That’s the most fucking punk rock band on the planet.” They have five arms. Only five. And they sound fucking amazing.

Is the keyboard player in other bands?

Um, no. He’s just a guy I met. We’re all just guys. He did the first Plate O’Shrimp, and then he did Mamma Mia! for Stumptown Stages. He came up to me and was, like, “Man, I just really love doing this stuff, my day job’s so boring.” This is so much more fulfilling, you know? He’s really inspired by all of this, and that’s so cool. I like inspiring people to produce some stuff and fulfill their own artistic ambition and feel good about doing their own art.

I mean, I don’t do this shit for money. At all. I work at Portland Center Stage doing electrical, and they like me there. Like I said, I might not break even on this show, but it’s still so so worth it to me. Money’s not as important as personal spiritual fulfillment. If I didn’t do what I did, I would wish I did what I did.

SEE IT: Plate O’Shrimp plays at the Chapel Theatre, 4107 SE Harrison St., 971-350-9675, chapeltheatremilwaukie.com. 7:30 pm Thursday-Friday and 2 pm Sunday, through Nov. 6. $25.

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