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LOCAL ACTOR JOINS EVIL LEAGUE OF EVIL
Jackie Demaline
Cincinnati Enquirer – Sunday, January 25, 2009
A mild-mannered Shakespearian actor in a mid-sized American city - talk about an innocuous alter ego for nefarious, pun-loving Tur-Mohel (that's 'turmoil' and a reference to the man who performs circumcisions), a proud member in bad standing of the Evil League of Evil, grown out of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
While a couple of hundred people a night will catch Jeremy Dubin onstage in "The Seagull" at Cincinnati Shakespeare through Feb 8 playing a beleaguered, turn-of-the-century Russia estate manager, his Tur-Mohel is an Internet star, thanks to the chart-topping Dr. Horrible DVD.
The Dr. Horrible phenomenon is not exactly underground. The 43-minute original musical was created last summer during the film/TV industry writer's strike by Joss ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") Whedon with family and friends. (Neil Patrick Harris is the title character.)
It started for Internet distribution only in August, 2008 in three installments; comic book/sci-fi geekdom converged online, crashing servers for the third installment. In September, an invitation went out to fans to submit applications to the Evil League of Evil. Hundreds came in, few were chosen.
When the Dr. Horrible DVD was released in December, it shot to the top of Amazon's Movies & TV bestseller chart, currently resting at No. 2 (it's No.1 on Amazon's Musical DVD category).
Find Tur-Mohel and Dubin in the special features section, where the top 10 applications are included. Tur-Mohel is the talk of the TV/sci-fi geek blogospheres, all the way up to Time Magazine's Tuned In, with TV critic James Poniewozik rhapsodizing about "'Tur-Mohel'…the world's evilest circumcision-performing super villain" and his musical commentary, which comes complete with bouncing Star of David above the lyrics.
The outrageously clever Tur-Mohel/Dubin's five-minute entry involves a miniature of the Washington Monument (see previous sentence) and his band of minyans (a nice Yiddish play on 'minions'), many who bear a striking resemblance to members of the Cincinnati Shakespeare acting company.
We have questions:
Enquirer: How is Joss Whedon like Shakespeare?
Dubin: First off, I think Joss would be extremely flattered by the comparison. He is a huge Shakespeare fan, and word is during "Buffy" and "Angel," he would have the casts over to his house periodically to do Shakespeare readings.
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