It’s a Friday night. I’m about to watch the first live musical of my life. I’m feeling the rose wine slosh in my stomach. I’m seated. I’ve gone in blind. I’m nervous. The lights dim. The curtain pulls back. I recede. Laura Murphy’s Zombie! The Musical emerges.
The symptoms of a zombie bite, in most media, exist in three stages.
The first symptom occurs at the onset of the bite. The patient becomes laconic, tense.
Set in Sydney, 1999, prior to the onset of a new millennium, Zombie! The Musical finds its opening orbit around a cast preparing for the opening night of a musical, with Drew Livingstone’s gay (or metrosexual? It is 1999 after all) director marking each of the female actors with a razor-thin label, cutting them down to size if they dare protrude beyond what their roles allow. The diminishment of each woman is counterpointed by the song ‘Meaty Part’, wherein Stefanie Jones and Natalia Abbot (with backup by Chelsea Dawson and Monique Sallé) soulfully recognise their need for more, asking, then demanding.
This mistreatment, and its aspects of ageism, sexism, and body-shaming, and Murphy’s use of these all-too-present issues, sets up the spine of the play, providing a structure upon which the rest of the show climbs.
The second symptom of a zombie infection is a fever, often associated with a ghostly pallor, sensitivity to light, and a rising sense of dread.
As Zombie! The Musical moves forward, the show turns to the titular undead, with the song ‘Into Your Brains’ forcing itself into you, an ear-worm syncopated with cracks of undead joints/bones. Chiara Assetta’s effortless choreography is accentuated by Ryan Gonzalez’ performance, sound and body wrapped under the technicolour blanket of Verity Hampson’s excellent lighting. The implementation of the zombies, too, felt satisfying. Although there were some unclear scene-changes, the single-stage of Zombie! The Musical never loses the threat of zombification. I do wonder, however, if there was some way for the stakes to be raised higher, but maybe this just ain’t that kind of show.
If the first half of Zombie! The Musical poses the threat, the second half is where the blood starts pumping. With Natalia Abbot coming into her role as the heroine perfectly, and the as-yet unmentioned Carol, played by Tamsin Carrol, coming out swinging in every single scene she’s in, landing every hit.
Zombie! The Musical does not take on a message of empathy with ignorance. The experience of hate, ignorance, and violence is not held at a distance from the characters. The universality of the message is not the wishy-washy way of centrism – rather a focused acknowledgement of what it is to feel pain, to wish to enact pain, and to swallow that down and give love to those that need it to their core. In such a danger-zone of cheesiness, the show never descends into cliché. Sam’s argument for empathy is not conceptual hand-wringing, and extends to the righteous and the wrongful in equal measure.
Beyond morality, the songs excel due to the combined efforts of the cast, band, and Murphy’s song-crafting.
As the apocalypse grows, the rhythm of each character beats truer. By the second-half, the characters have settled into their groove, and each of their arcs engender a genuine warmth, whether through personal realisation or the moments they share with each other. Particularly of note is Felicity and Sam’s parabola, close, far, close. One character I wish had been more fleshed out was that of Trace, who felt more like a lesson than a person at times, with her primary role being one of teaching the other characters how to physically fight back against bullying behaviour. I felt her contribution to the overall moral was under-examined, with her view of violence and her experiences somewhat brushed over.
After the presentation of symptoms, the only way we knew of dealing with zombies is/was with violence. Decapitation or destruction.
And that’s not really someone we’ve seemed to question. It’s always worked best for us, nevermind the zombie. Nevermind the victim infected through the violence of others. Nevermind the person transformed against their desires.
Yet, perhaps in this new millennium of rehashed culture-wars and divides we should look to Zombie! The Musical and see that calculated anger is no better than mindless anger, and the only way to cure us, all of us, from hate’s sickness is to extend our arms around ourselves and others. Hopefully this love can get to our hearts before hate sinks its teeth into our brains.
Zombie! The Musical is playing at The Hayes Theatre until April 6.
