With the innovative stage version of George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead shuffling its way in to London next month, Nick Joy picked the brains of director Benji Sperring to find out how just safe audiences will be and what they can expect from this monochrome night out.

 

Hi Benji, in my interview with the show’s producer Katy Lipson she shared how excited she was when first reading the script. Did you have a similar reaction?

Oh yes, I needed to do this. The script itself is genius. It’s such a strong blend of comedy and horror – being able pitch that right is a really specific thing, and not many scripts can do it. There’s a genuine sense of discomfort and uncertainty that allows you to be a bit spooked at times, and this really lands it. I just don’t think I could let anyone else take those jokes, and I’m really looking forward to playing with it.

Because this is the UK premiere of the play it means that you can put your mark on it.

Yeah, we also brought over The Toxic Avenger [musical] and Shock Treatment – which is the sequel to The Rocky Horror Show – and that was the first time they’d been on stage here. It’s nice to have that clean slate without expectation; you’re not fighting against anything, you’re creating something new. The expectations of the fans – we’ll be able to sort those – as well as those just coming along for a laugh. There’s no predecessor we need to live up to.

Because the zombie genre has become over-saturated in recent years I guess you need to come up with something new.

Yes, I think so. Funnily enough I teach at a school in South London and I do a bit on Shakespeare. I talk about how a modern audience will never get the experience that a Shakespearean audience had because we know what the stories are – we know that Macbeth will meet with the witches. It’s the same with zombies – we can’t imagine what it was like when the movie first came out. There wasn’t any film classification [in the US the MPAA ratings didn’t start till the year the movie came out] – kids were watching it at a matinee in cinemas; think how scary that would have been. We can’t recreate that because everyone knows the expectations, so it’s about subverting and playing with the expectations. We’re not going to try to a 28 Days Later and reinvent zombies or give them something new; it’s about doing it faithfully but also playing with the conventions.

Zombies are scary but there’s still the sense that you could run away if you really needed to.

The nice thing about the theatre is that we’ve got the audience up on the stage and they’re literally in the middle of everything. They’re on a revolve, so they can’t escape! There’s some people who are going to be amongst it, and as much as they might like to escape, they can’t. And then there’s a bunch of the audience watching this and seeing that they’re trapped a little bit. The thing I’ve always liked about zombies is their inescapability in as far as they never stop. No matter how quickly you run away, they’re always going to be around. They’re always going to be after you. They just keep piling on, the presence of the zombie grows and grows – you physically can’t get out of the house.

Continuing that Shakespeare analogy, Romero is arguably the Shakespeare of the zombie genre with all these famous lines associated with the film. How do you approach these – do you treat them as sacred cows?

I think they are sacred, and I know those lines – they’ve transcended the movie. When I sat down and read them I went ‘Of course they came from this’. There are certain moments that are inescapable to avoid, in the same way that you wouldn’t cut ‘To be or not to be’. And if you do cut them the audience goes bananas and hates it because it’s sacrilegious.

There are moments here which are quite iconic. One that springs to mind is the first time you see the zombies eating – feasting – and the technique that they used was ripping off pieces of smoked salmon. It wasn’t particularly difficult to do, but it was quite iconic, and if you don’t deliver on them bits you end up short-changing an audience who are fans.

The play doesn’t just cover the regular movie does it?

What I like about the script is that the first half is a faithful recreation, hits all the beats that the original film does. The second addresses ‘what if?’ questions. What if the lead was a woman? What if it was led by a white man? What happens if they try to make friends with the zombies, or if they were all given weapons? It tries each one and explores how successful or not the ramifications would be.

This sounds fascinating, because those are the same thoughts that we are having as audience members when we question ‘Why did you do that?’

Exactly! ‘Why are you running down into the cellar? There’s no escape from the cellar!’ So we try it and see what happens, and then it resets back to a certain point because that didn’t work and we try something else. Every time we do it there’s a half-life – the first act is the whole story, the second iteration is about half the time of the second half, the third one is a quarter and then an eighth, a sixteenth. It gets shorter and shorter as it gets more and more ridiculous.

I can draw parallels with recent zombie movie One Cut of the Dead where the first third is the film and then we get to see behind the scenes before we then see the making of the making of – it’s all very meta!

‘Meta’ is the word, because we’ve gone past all of that now. Cabin in the Woods is the perfect example where we know what the expectations are, and you can make also a show based on expectations which are changed. You can layer and layer as you go, and the audience will engage if you make it into a gag – they will go along with that. The sophistication of the audience is really important because they are prepared to make those intellectual and emotional leaps when they’re going through a story.

I’m very intrigued by your monochrome set design – the fact that you’re making a black and white play!

Yes, and it presents its own questions. I realised that the designer and I were getting into it a bit too much when we were talking about one of the characters having a cigarette on stage and that we’d need a special filter so that it didn’t glow red! And then we realised that we cant change the colour of fire! The fact that we go through the same [story] cycle over and over, various characters don’t make it to the end, and then when they reset in their black and white makeup – it’s going to be a state on stage.

Presumably it’s trickier to source black stage blood than regular stage blood, but how do you get black blood?

We’ve done a few experiments and they haven’t ended well! They’ve ended with people staining themselves and looking like actual zombies! We’ve looked at various theatrical makeup paints but they’re just a bit too thick especially when you try to make them viscous enough to be like blood. That image from The Evil Dead with Bruce Campbell covered in motor oil – it’s a really strong image and that’s what we’re going for.

And I guess there’s the extra challenge on two-show days of having to reset after the matinee?

There’s almost as big a stage management team on stage as there are actors. Just being there to get everything ready and the costumes redone. For a show like this in particular where they are on the go the whole time, it’s relentless – none of the actors or crew have an easy part.

How does the Pleasance Theatre compare as a performance space to some of your previous venues?

It’s quite a big space – a 300 seater – the stage width is 11 metres, so that’s how we’ve managed to get the audience on to centre stage. The only way I can describe it is that we’re using the outskirts of the stage. We wanted to do something immersive and we are immersing the audience regardless of where you’re sitting. Because of the way the backstage works we can do ins and outs from everywhere. We use all available stage space. And we’ve got some space in the centre so that we can engage with those audience members in a really spectacular way [laughs]. Some of the performers we’ve got are fearless when it comes to audience engagement and if you’re sat on the stage you’re going to have a lovely time.

So, do these victims… I mean patrons… know just how involved they are going to be when they buy their tickets?

I think that’s something they may discover on the night! It started off as a bit of joke between me and the designer when I said ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we stick the audience on a revolve, rather than change the way that the stage works?’ I think that there is something innately funny about that. They’re sitting traverse, four rows facing one another, and they have this huge 4-metre swathe of stage behind them. They won’t be able to see it, but the rest of the audience – the other 250 people – absolutely will be able to see it. That’s going to be more exciting than anything else.

Are you anticipating fainters or people having to be taken out of the auditorium by ushers? Would that be a good result?

I always feel a little bit ashamed when that happens. I went to see Titus Andronicus at The Globe a few years ago and that was the show where everyone was fainting. I don’t want to make people unconscious in my show, I want them to laugh and have a good time, not think it was so gross that they passed out. I want people to enjoy the fun.

We like being scared, and I think the people who sit on the stage are the ones who stick their arms up on a rollercoaster. I don’t want to scare the shit out of them and that’s because I don’t want people to feel vulnerable. If I pitch it right it’s going to be the sort of scare where people laugh straight away afterwards rather than feeling genuinely frightened.

The structure of the show is quite unique. Do you want that to be kept a secret or are you happy that the audience come in with that fore-knowledge?

I’m not worried about it being a secret. The joy of it is in the iteration and the joyfulness. I know that Romero never intended [the original movie] to be a social commentary, but it was, and it was received as that. The best way to question issues like that with an audience is through humour, energy and joy rather than through seriousness. If it starts conversations – the fact that one of the iterations is that the black lead is replaced by a white man – then that’s a fascinating point of conversation

There’s a certain snobbery around theatre, which some see is just for the elite. But this show feels like it’s something that anyone could see. Is that part of your plan – to make theatre accessible?

Yes. It’s always been a massive part of why I’ve made theatre. I don’t see there should be any difference in going to the theatre than going to the pub. I don’t like the snobbery and perceived class difference. I’m trying to break that down in my shows, whether that’s ‘B’ movies, horrors or comedies. Theatre should come alive, engaging with a live audience.

 

Night of the Living Dead is running from 9 April to 19 May 2019 at Pleasance Theatre, London. Tickets are available at http://www.LivingDeadLondon.com