Zany, spooky, fun! That is the way to describe Vampire's Ball Ultimate Halloween Party Live! Although it was on Zoom, and they were up against time lags on the extremely odd occasion, it did not affect the show in the slightest. The crazy duo of Brad Tassell and Steve Goodie broadcast live from the States to bring the spirit of Christmas and Halloween together in a safe, family friendly atmosphere, aiming to demystify the scariness of the season, and all the infamous characters such as witches, mummies, werewolves and more.
Zany, spooky, fun!
Using various spooky backgrounds with interactive karaoke and visual elements, as well as live and recorded music, plus numerous lightning quick costume and special effects makeup changes, the two men very quickly made Halloween accessible for everyone watching, making it so that the celebration was for all year round, and not just for October. The fact that their upbeat energy and comedy timing was engaging and 'on point', made the whole experience enjoyable. At the same time, it was educational as, from time to time as a way to break up their jokes and music, they described some of the ways these creatures came about. For instance, they took the werewolf and broke its journey of change as depicted in classic movies like The Wolf Man down into fun bitesize storytelling moments without focusing on the scary aspect of that particular creature. They merely said how it is the saddest creature of all of them as they cannot remember what happened to them as a werewolf after turning back into a human. Backed up with a song that was reminiscent of Weird Al Yanchovich called The Werewolf's Lament, Tassell and Goodie brought both drama and fun to highlight this particular creature, making sure that everyone's level of comedy was catered for, no matter whether you were young, or young at heart.
To cater to the history fanatics, there were also elements of how Halloween came about in the States, and why candy was brought into the proceedings. But what made this show particularly special was the story behind it, as well as fun dance routines and chances for the audience to interact and add spooky sounds to some of the songs. When I spoke to Tassle and Goodie after the show, it turned out it was inspired by not only their mutual love of Halloween and Christmas, but the story of Tassell's young daughter who came home from school one day and made the innocent comment of "Daddy, why was no one singing songs about reindeer poop?" The rest was history.
Vampire's Ball Ultimate Halloween Party Live was an extremely fast paced and entertaining show that now needs to be taken onto a live stage rather than Zoom. If you thought this particular version of the show was great, it would be extremely exciting to see what Tassell and Goodie could do on a live stage in front of a live audience to see what crazy antics they would get up to next.
