BWW Reviews: Marble Stage Delivers Toothless Production of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

I'm a completely unabashed fan of George Romero's 1968 classic film Night of the Living Dead. I first saw it a midnight screening and was floored by it's raw cinematic energy and black and white gore. It was one of the first films I owned on video tape during the video revolution, and it was widely available since the title had slipped into the public domain. When the official Romero-approved version hit DVD I picked that up as well, and I even have a copy of the film on my iPod. So, I was pleased that a group actually did the smart thing and decided to stage a presentation during the Halloween season. It's too bad that Marble Stage had to battle the surging St. Louis Cardinals and their phenomenal and improbable World Series run for an audience. It's also too bad that their production wasn't more tightly executed.

For the uninitiated, Night of the Living Dead concerns the possibility that a Venus probe, that returns to Earth with a high degree of radioactivity, causes the dead to rise and feast on the flesh of the living, converting whoever they bite into a fellow zombie, and thus spreading the problem exponentially. I'm not sure what script was followed here (no one is credited), since there is an actual play version as opposed to John Russo and George Romero's screenplay, but the play version runs around 80 minutes and this presentation only clocked in around an hour.

A game cast seems to be having fun, and that's an important part of community theatre. The audience seemed to enjoy themselves as well, and that counts for a lot too. However, a number of performances lacked the necessary intensity to actually make this a scary (or even silly) production, and that's a real shame. D. Conrad Burk distinguishes himself with his take on the resourceful and caring Ben, Grant Neimeyer was the jerk he needed to be as Harry, who insists that everyone stay down in the cellar (actually, in the end, it's the soundest advice), and Lauren Keck has the lost soul of someone completely confused by her situation as Barbara. Tina Risse ably displays her disgust at her husband Harry's stubborn demeanor, and Jaiymz Hawkins and Kelsey Raidt are pretty decent as the young couple who wind up as living dead barbecue (as Ben's escape plan literally backfires on them), as Tom and Judy, respectively.

Director Colleen Forrest keeps things a bit too light and loose to either make us scared or bring forth laughter, so I'm not sure exactly what approach she was taking to the material. The decision to add the living dead dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" at the end is certainly amusing, but completely out of context amidst the "supposed" seriousness of the subject matter. Her set design (conceived along with lead Zombie Bill Willard) is also risky since it places the audience squarely within its confines. This puts the viewer right into the action, but it also means there are things we're going to miss as well. Greg Matzker's lighting isn't able to effectively capture all the action since there are too many times when events are taking place simultaneously.

But, I commend the group overall for their attempt, and it's certainly a clever choice for the holiday. I look forward to their future endeavors.

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