A Musical With Brains

It's always interesting getting news on weird and obscure shows from Madison. There'™s a real spirit of experimentation on the stage over there . . . a city with less going on onstage than Milwaukee seems to have just as many new shows in a given year. One of the more interesting-looking pieces of original theatre in Madison this particular years appears to be Z-Town--The Zombie Musical.

The premise appears to be that there'™s a town entirely populated by zombies. Some of Romero's early work in Zombie cinema made clever satire on society. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright took that satire a bit closer to a sophisticated, contemporary world. This independent production (sponsored in part by Madison's Stage Q) seems to be taking it to the next logical extreme beyond the basic "let'™s make zombies sing and dance" in a traditional musical format.

The town that brought us the Zombeatles mockumentary a few years back stages something perhaps a bit more refined. The conflict for the musical goes a little something like this: a town of zombies is drawing suspicion from neighboring towns. As something of a PR move to try to allay fears and concerns, the zombies invite a normal, living family to live with them.

Could be brilliant if handled right. Could be fun even if it isn't brilliant. If nything the music sounds pretty good. Here's a link to a rehearsal from the show.

Z-Town-The Zombie Musical runs September 29^th - October 15^th at the Drury Stage of the Bartell Theatre. For ticket reservations, visit Brown Paper TIckets.