‘Alive! The Zombie Musical’ Wakes the Dead
George Romero would be proud. The late filmmaker, best known for his B-quality zombie films, passed away in 2017, but Josh Canfield is keeping the genre alive (no pun intended) with more juice and jazz hands than Romero thought possible.
Canfield’s, Alive! The Zombie Musical received a one night only, staged concert reading last week at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre in Midtown’s Signature Theatre. It was part of the New York Musical Festival.
Director David Ruttura assembled an impressive cast of Broadway performers to tell the story of Zombie 6 (Zach Adkins), a disenchanted zombie in search of his humanity. Along the way, he forms a romance with Eve Blake (Amanda Jane Cooper).
Canfield, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics is quite a talent and offers a diverse range of musical styles. From blues to pop to gospel, this energetic score popped, thanks largely in part to musical director/arranger Taylor Peckham. Canfield’s writing is consistently funny and he keeps the action rolling along at a brisk 75 minutes. Underneath the humor, however, he’s managed to find the humanity and warns us to the dangers of “fearing the other” — a tired, oppressive ideology repeated constantly by a real-life President hell-bent on nationalism.
It’s unclear what the next step for Alive! will be, but if audience reaction is any indication, there is undoubtedly a craving for the material. Monday night’s crowd was so electrifying that even the deceased could hear the applause.
