“Night of the Living Dead” a brisk bit of Halloween fun

You may not have seen the film, but you know the premise, so deeply is the legacy of 1968’s Night of the Living Dead embedded in pop culture: the recently deceased are coming back to life and very slowly attacking the living, including a small group of ordinary folk thrown together in an abandoned house. 

While John Faust’s 2016 stage adaptation is more or less faithful to the film, it’s really just an excuse for Long Beach Playhouse to offer audiences a bit of ghoulish fun to get you in the mood for Halloween.

As they do every year, siblings Johnny (Ethan Kim) and Barbara (Sarah Frazin) return to the Pennsylvania cemetery to lay a wreath on their father’s grave. Knowing that the place gives his sister the willies, Johnny jokes that a man ambling towards them is coming to get her. Joke’s on Johnny, though. Bewildered Barbara manages to make her way across town, where she meets Ben (El Grey), who becomes the de facto leader of a half-dozen souls holed up in a house and wondering what the hell’s happening, while the undead congregate throughout town — an unbelievable phenomenon that news reports are nonetheless confirming.

With a total run-time of about 70 minutes, Night of the Living Dead is the shortest play I’ve ever seen that’s bifurcated by an intermission. While that means you may barely have settled in before the lights come up at the halfway mark, it’s part and parcel with how director David Scaglione doesn’t dilly-dally in telling this simple story. 

And simple it is. No character is given a true backstory or arc, no answers to the mystery are forthcoming, and aside from the news reports — including speculations by a Dr. Grimes (Catherine Rahm), whose scientific curiosity about the phenomenon trumps her fear and compassion — the action is more or less confined to the aforesaid house, where not much happens. None of this is a failing — it just goes some way to explaining how the Playhouse can get away with a run-time this short. 

The show’s cast is solid. No doubt screaming was part of Franzin’s audition — she’s definitely got that classic horror screech. And although Rahm’s take on the good doctor owes an obvious debt to Peter Sellars’s Dr. Strangelove, nothing wrong with that, and she earns some of the biggest laughs.

The one notable shortcoming is the fight choreography — a bane of small theatre in general and a regular Playhouse weak spot. No matter what, this play was going to lean heavily on our suspension of disbelief. That’s not a problem until it unnecessarily takes us out of the moment — which almost all the fights here do, brief as they are. No fight choreographer is listed in the program, and it shows.

The show’s only real surprise comes at the end, where Scaglione and co. add a little something to the script. It’s a perfect final stroke that raises the overall experience of the show.

As Scaglione says in this director’s notes, “Night of the Living Dead is…grr, about…Brains. Grrrrrrr. Must. Ahhh. Have. Urgh. Brains. BRAINS! Thank, garf, you[.]” It’s meant as nothing more than a bit of Halloween fun — and on that score, it succeeds well enough. 

Night of the Living Dead at Long Beach Playhouse
Times: Fri–Sat 8:00 p.m., Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through October 17.
Cost: $33–$37
Details: (562) 494-1014; LBplayhouse.org 
Venue: Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach