{"id":476671,"date":"2026-09-26T18:38:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T18:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/476671\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T18:38:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T18:38:22","slug":"night-of-the-living-dead-a-brisk-bit-of-halloween-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/476671\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d a brisk bit of Halloween fun –"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Photo by Mike Hardy <\/p>\n

You may not have seen the film, but you know the premise, so deeply is the legacy of 1968\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

While John Faust\u2019s 2016 stage adaptation is more or less faithful to the film, it\u2019s really just an excuse for Long Beach Playhouse to offer audiences a bit of ghoulish fun to get you in the mood for Halloween.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s grave. Knowing that the place gives his sister the willies, Johnny jokes that a man ambling towards them is coming to get her. Joke\u2019s 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\u2019s happening, while the undead congregate throughout town \u2014 an unbelievable phenomenon that news reports are nonetheless confirming.<\/p>\n

With a total run-time of about 70 minutes, Night of the Living Dead is the shortest play I\u2019ve ever seen that\u2019s bifurcated by an intermission. While that means you may barely have settled in before the lights come up at the halfway mark, it\u2019s part and parcel with how director David Scaglione doesn\u2019t dilly-dally in telling this simple story.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 including speculations by a Dr. Grimes (Catherine Rahm), whose scientific curiosity about the phenomenon trumps her fear and compassion \u2014 the action is more or less confined to the aforesaid house, where not much happens. None of this is a failing \u2014 it just goes some way to explaining how the Playhouse can get away with a run-time this short.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s cast is solid. No doubt screaming was part of Franzin\u2019s audition \u2014 she\u2019s definitely got that classic horror screech. And although Rahm\u2019s take on the good doctor owes an obvious debt to Peter Sellars\u2019s Dr. Strangelove, nothing wrong with that, and she earns some of the biggest laughs.<\/p>\n

The one notable shortcoming is the fight choreography \u2014 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\u2019s not a problem until it unnecessarily takes us out of the moment \u2014 which almost all the fights here do, brief as they are. No fight choreographer is listed in the program, and it shows.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s only real surprise comes at the end, where Scaglione and co. add a little something to the script. It\u2019s a perfect final stroke that raises the overall experience of the show.<\/p>\n

As Scaglione says in this director\u2019s notes, \u201cNight of the Living Dead is\u2026grr, about\u2026Brains. Grrrrrrr. Must. Ahhh. Have. Urgh. Brains. BRAINS! Thank, garf, you[.]\u201d It\u2019s meant as nothing more than a bit of Halloween fun \u2014 and on that score, it succeeds well enough.<\/p>\n

Night of the Living Dead at Long Beach Playhouse
Times: Fri\u2013Sat 8:00 p.m., Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through October 17.
Cost: $33\u2013$37
Details: (562) 494-1014; LBplayhouse.org<\/a>
Venue: Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Mike Hardy You may not have seen the film, but you know the premise, so deeply…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[9720,187254,50434,585,131,133,132,9722],"class_list":["post-476671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-curtaincall","tag-livingdead","tag-longbeachplayhouse","tag-halloween","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-rln"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}