Zombie Déjà Vu
Here’s one we just dug up from the vaults…. Perhaps the strangest case of déjà vu we have ever encountered involves Leif E. Gantvoort’s black-comedy horror zombie play, which we first encountered as They’re Not Zombies in Halloween 2006. Since then, the play has been revived twice, under two different titles: The Afflicted in Halloween 2013 and The Zombie Effect in Halloween 2014. The sly joke in all versions is that the characters, confronted by what appears to be the zombie apocalypse, have nothing to go on except their knowledge of zombie movies, which may or may not apply to their current situation.
We enjoyed all three iterations, but the original holds a special place in our heart because it hit the nail most clearly on the head, naming all its characters after the actors in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Hopefully, it will return to a Los Angeles theatre during some not too distant Halloween season.
