In Carrie,StephenKing's richest book and Brian De Palma's best film, the blood comes from swine, murder and menses. Onstage last winter, in Phil Kinen and Ron Megee's jolly takedown of De Palma's lurid film, much of that blood flowered forth as red ribbon, most memorably in the notorious shower scene, which found Chadwick Brooks, as Carrie, going from sudsy masturbation to screaming, her period streaming in front of her whole gym class. Brooks, certainly the first editor of KC Magazine ever to boast "once played Sissy Spacek" on his résumé, anchored the show with his silent screams and quavery fragility, but it was Kinen's script, his and Megee's direction, an explosion of outrageous costumes and cheap but effective shocks that made this such a fine send-off for the now-defunct Late Night Theatre: It lanced the original but honored what we loved about it. All those bloody ribbons were the final touch on a gift worth remembering.
