REVIEW: Night of the Living Dead – Remix

The results of their frenetic onstage scramble to stay synchronised with the film are broadcast on a screen alongside the 1968 original.

There's no doubting the technical brilliance of the ensemble, who switch deftly from performers to technicians and deliver their lines perfectly in time.

Romero's low-budget masterpiece is reproduced shot-for-shot with meticulous attention to detail: models are used to duplicate the shots with cars and large groups of zombies, and hand-drawn scenes are projected as the locations change.

I was dazzled by the first half of the play but grew a little sceptical as it ground towards its conclusion.

The eye is drawn in three different directions simultaneously, and I found myself wondering what the overall effect was supposed to be.

Romero's film is a ferociously suspenseful ordeal that has the horrid quality of a nightmare from which you can't escape.

By contrast most of the tension generated by the version staged by Leeds-based company Imitating the Dog consists of waiting to see if the actors would make a mistake. It's to their credit that they don't, but the "remix" doesn't really add anything to its source material.

There's humour when the models are used but the stage version isn't consistently funny.

Running archive film footage of the Vietnam war and the JFK and MLK assassinations alongside the action felt hamfisted.

The film draws parallels without resorting to statements of the obvious, and is all the more powerful as a result.

Night of the Living Dead - Remix really is a triumph of performance, timing and ingenuity, which I'd recommend to horror, and non-horror, fans alike.

But like many of the lumbering reanimations which shambled after Romero, it lacks the conceptual rigour (mortis) of the original.

The tour continues:

Dundee Repertory Theatre:

13-14th March 2020

BOX OFFICE: 01382 223530

Manchester HOME:

18th-21st March 2020

BOX OFFICE: 0161 200 1500