TROUBLED TEEN Staci has just moved to a small Washington town to live with her folksy sheriff's deputy of a father—from there, Varsity Cheerleader Werewolves Live from Outer Space dishes out a host of campy tongue-in-cheek tropes that echo Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and '80s B-movie sci-fi romps. This is not high theater, true. The show started off as an enhanced read-through for director Steve Coker's film script that he fleshed out with actors and sound effects, which grew into the cabaret-style production it is now.

The production played to a packed crowd in January at the Rialto's basement bar, the Jack London, and now it's back for a one-off night and a longer run planned for April at the Funhouse Lounge. And basically Varsity Cheerleader is perfect bar theater—it's clumsy and likeable and full of opportunities to drunkenly cheer (I can only assume this since I saw a dress rehearsal at an elementary school, which is a very dissonant place to see cheerleaders in lingerie). The shenanigans are held together by a great straight-faced performance by Brooke Totman as Staci, and there are a lot of shenanigans: stripping cheerleaders, scooter-riding bad boys, hillbillies, a creepy puppet cat, and an Amazonian alien commander. With Varsity Cheerleader's 70 minutes of fun goof, it's way more bang than you'd normally get at a bar for five bucks.