So I guess in a sense this is Return of The Night of the Living Dead Puppet Show with Angry Young Men Ltd. Angry Young Men is a clever Milwaukee-based satirical puppet group that has emerged with some national recognition for their Zombie puppet show. (Harlan Ellison evidently liked a performance of the show and has gone on record saying as much.)
The long-running Night of the Living Dead Puppet Show is a scene-for-scene/ line-for-line recreation of the classic horror film live and in person with puppets. When I first heard of this, I was kind of surprised that a small-budget company could get the rights to do a puppet-baed adaptation of the horror film. Evidently Angry Young Men doesn't have the rights to the film because there aren't any. It's in the public domain . . . which makes it kind of a fun, little project . . . the piñata-headed gift that keeps on giving as zombie puppets are killed and candy spills out of their heads.
I caught the show a while back at Bucketworks' old location. The show has since been performed at a number of different places, including the historic Oriental Theatre, where it returns this Halloween for another performance this year.
The Night of the Living Dead Puppet Show will hit the stage of the Oriental Theatre on October 31st. Doors open at 7pm for a 7:30 performance. Tickets to the show are $10.
