George A Romero’s 1968 horror classic has had many iterations over the years, from remakes to sequels to books to comics to animation, but the latest variation promises to be the most audacious yet – a live play in London! Nick Joy caught up with its producer Katy Lipson from Aria Entertainment to find out how you translate a black and white classic to the stage. The answer is that you create another back and white classic!

 

 

 

 

Hi Katie, I imagine that a zombie play is not something that crosses your desk ever day. How did this script get your attention?

All producers are looking for new ideas, and I’m a producer looking for original shows, whether that’s UK premieres or new writing, particularly in the musical theatre genre. And I have a real love of cult and horror, zombies and films, and so I’m really interested in producing across different mediums if something takes my fancy. I am always browsing in terms of repertoire and shows within licensing houses and I was doing so with the Samuel French publishers and that’s when I became aware of the stage adaptation of The Night of the Living Dead. I was always aware of other cult shows like The Evil Dead musical, but I wasn’t aware of this.

And you read the script there and then?

When I saw the perusal script it was excellent and I shared it with a director [Benji Sperring] that I’d done the musical version of a Troma film with, The Toxic Avenger. I said to him ‘This looks really good, what do you think?’ And this is where we are now. We’ve picked a theatre, we’ve got an image, we’ve got a cast and we’re in the early stages of pre-production. I like it and I felt that it was topical and relevant. I felt that there as an audience for it.

This is the first UK stage production of it. What’s its history elsewhere? Presumably it premiered in the States?

In Canada actually, it started in Toronto with the team that were behind The Evil Dead: The Musical. George A Romero was alive at the time and he was quite involved and he authorised the production – he’d seen the script and was involved in the process, but sadly passed away and obviously hasn’t been able to be involved in our production. He knew all about it and was involved as executive producer, but this is the first time that it has come to the UK and is a completely different production in terms of design, cast… everything.

It’s also the only authorised production as well. What does that mean?

When we say authorised it’s because the title is trademarked. George was involved with the creative process, as is his wife who runs the Romero estate, and importantly royalties go back to them. The movie is out of copyright, so with a lot of the films and other things franchised out of it they don’t really benefit from it, but this one will because that’s what the authors wanted. They wanted to honour that.

For many years it was possible to pick up a poor copy of the movie because it was within public domain and anyone could release it. Did you have to satisfy any particular requirements to get the Romero approval – the licence to perform it?

When the Canadians originally made it they reached out to George and he sanctioned and loved this script. The script was then published by Samuel French who trust the licensing house to choose the appropriate team to do it. So, if I was up against a number of other people, they would have chosen me for my proposal, which includes my creative team, my vision, my track record. A lot of licenses happen like that. Is the producer investable? Are they a good choice, and are they going to honour the script? Will they make it high quality and market it well?

If we were in the States, would this be considered as a fringe or Off-Broadway production?

Yes. Absolutely.

So, just to be clear, it’s not a musical, it’s a straight play?

It is. It’s very interesting. There’s two acts, and they’re two very different acts. Act One is a play version of the film, on stage, as you could imagine. But it’s a small cast and what’s amazing about it is that there are six actors on stage playing everything. There’s an element of hysteria in terms of fast costume changes, like when they go from the basement to upstairs, to being a zombie outside – they’re doing everything.

So it’s funny?

We have the frantic comedy that comes out through that doubling. But the script will be played completely seriously – there will be elements of comedy, but there are also elements of fear. It has music insofar as it has a composed, cinematic score behind it. It has real atmosphere.

And then in Act Two it’s turned on its head and there’s like ten different endings. What would have happened if… Ben had been a woman? What if the black protagonist had been a white protagonist? It really explores racial prejudice and it’s very clever in the way it asks you to question the period and the genre. And it might have a little song in it as well, just to ham it up at the end!

For the real aficionados who know the film really well it makes sense that you’re giving them something extra, or they might as well be watching the movie at home.

I think that the hardcore film fans probably don’t know yet what this is. They’re collectors of all the memorabilia, all the different version – the Blu-rays, the signed copies – and they might not necessarily know what it is on stage. Even if you love that story, there’s going to be some intrigue about it because you can never replicate a film on stage. Fifty years later, representing a film on stage is going to be different anyway, but there’s so much here. Even if Night of the Living Dead was an original title, it’s a great script, but it has got that legacy behind it, these characters and the story that everyone knows – those iconic lines.

The location of the film in its third act, when it becomes a house under siege, really does lend itself to the stage, that confined single set.

Totally. We’re doing another production at the moment – Hair – and that’s written at the same time as this film, around the Vietnam War era. It’s interesting how Night might feel like it’s the grand-daddy of the zombie film, but it also says something much bigger, and we’ve come full circle with that in terms of where we are politically. It feels right. It feels like a good night out – for us to honour that and for people to have fun at the same time.

We’ve got such a fantastic team on it. A great designer who did my production of The Addams Family. The set is incredible, there’s elements of intimacy with on-stage seating, and it’s going to be really interesting how that works.

From a rating perspective, is it going to be suitable for late teens or are you looking for an older audience?

We’re saying 13 upwards because there are going to be some shocking moments.

I think most 13-year-olds today can put up with a lot more than adults!

I agree!

One of the issues with the zombie genre over the last few years is that it has become saturated – various Walking Dead shows, iZombie, countless movies. The trick I guess is to find something original.

Totally. I don’t think people have put zombies on stage though. I know that there have been interactive experiences where you walk down an alley and chased like you’re in a movie, but this is a genuine play, it’s just really interesting from a genre point of view. This is a theatrical experience where you’re going to be close-up or far away depending on where you sit. You’re laughing one moment and then scared the next – it has that live, immersive quality.

Interestingly enough, in the set design everything is in black and white, which also feels like an homage to the period, so it’s conceptually interesting. I think it’s going to get great word of mouth, it’s just a hard one to explain what the show is, because it has so many things which are interesting, and that’s not easy to convey with a poster.

How difficult has it been in finding that fine line between reverence and pastiche? Zombies in themselves are quite ridiculous.

Of course. But what we have going for us is that the writing is the writing. We know the tone of the writing and we know that George was proud of that and was executive producer on this script. I know that I understand the script, as does my director. We understand what genre this is, we know how to represent it. Ultimately the show is respectful of the original because the creator was happy with it. This is the whole thing about it being official – he signed off that script and was happy for its evolution into this form, for this day and age, and I think that’s important.

So, author approval is important?

I know that sometimes people aren’t happy with an author and what they’ve done to their own work, but you can’t just put the film on stage, and that’s that. As direct representation it wouldn’t necessarily work because film and theatre are not the same. You have to understand the difference in storytelling.

The performance space is the Pleasance Theatre, which is a venue that I’m not familiar with. Is it an intimate setting?

It’s a really cool space actually. It’s known for comedy, and it’s an end-on theatre with 200 seats and quite a big stage which we’re going to fill with the set. Stage left you’re going to have the basement, on the other side it’s the basement, and in the middle you’ll have a huge centrepiece that the audience are going to be on, and that’s going to move to signify the change in location. It’s all black and white, as I’ve said, and it will feel nothing like a West End theatre. From the back of the theatre to the stage is going to be like being middle of the stalls – it’s that small. So that gives a great experience to the theatregoer as well, it makes the gore a bit more graphic. Again, the gore is black and white – the blood is going to be black – very interesting.

The ending of the movie is still so effective because it’s so grim, and I’m still shocked by the girl zombie.

Oh my God! We’ve got two girls in the cast and they’ve got to play the kid and the adult.

Because you’d done The Toxic Avenger and The Addams Family, did that make it easier for you to get the backing to mount this production?

Yes, but this is very different – it’s a different audience, a different theatre, a different scale. The Addams Family was a massive tour with names from television – a very famous Broadway musical, and a family show where people were buying 24 tickets at a time. It was hard to sell at first, but when word-of-mouth started it suddenly started to take off. Toxie [The Toxic Avenger] was harder at Southwark Playhouse because again it was harder to sell against a West End ticket price and because people will go and see something more familiar. I think that the marketing for this is going to mention that I produced those shows.

Finally, you said that you’re a fan of cult projects, which by definition means these projects already have a loyal fanbase. For the Night of the Living Dead fans will they get to see their favourite moments and classic dialogue lines like “They’re coming to get you, Barbara?”

Yeah, they’re all in the script. It’s there in the text, which is very much taken from the screenplay. It really honours that and they have all those iconic lines. Like when I did The Addams Family tour, Wednesday has her plaits, Gomez has his cigars, Fester had a bald head. It’s going to represent the film and serve their understanding of it. They’re going to see these characters and the structure of the show in the same way. There’s a couple of things added because there’s things a camera can do that you can’t do in a theatre. But those lines are there!

 

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

Photos from the stage production by Claire Bilyard, used with permission