Remember how I postulated about Night of the Living Dead: The Opera? I had this idea about the living singing in Italian, the dead in German (with lots of basso profundo) and so forth. Well, turns out some version of it has already been done. Damn!
Squonk Opera did it for City Theatre in Pittsburgh back in 1995…so we were told by one of Squonk’s head burritos, Steve O’Hearn. You can go check out their site here with the info on the Dead Opera here (along with a few shots of the stage in action) here. And Papa Romero and the stars of the film came out to see it.
Sadly, though, there’s no video of the performance. Double damn! Somebody really needs to do a revival. I’m just saying.
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I was lucky enough to see this when it played at the City Theater not once but three times. It was absolutely brilliant. They did this remarkable interplay between the movie and the stage show. Sometimes the band would play music that accented the music and dialogue from the movie, sometimes the movie soundtrack was totally muted and the band’s songs were a running commentary, then the band would act out various skits either mimicking the film or doing some other deconstruction of what was going on. One of my favorite parts was when Ben slaps Barbra in the film and she passes out, the band then acts out what Barbra must be dreaming while on screen Ben reinforces the doors and windows. Absolutely brilliant. If there was a video of this performance I would be absolutely thrilled to see it. Or even better, a revival.
Don…totally freaking jealous here. Just so you know. Thanks for the comment, man.