Starts 7.30pm | Tickets £18.50 | U25 & *Unwaged £15.50 | Theatre | Age guidance 15+

An imitating the dog and Leeds Playhouse Co-production

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD ™ – REMIX is presented by courtesy of Image Ten, Inc.

In 1968 Night of the Living Dead started out as a low-budget independent horror movie. Now, 50 years on, the film is recognised as a ground-breaking classic. A story of fear and alienation, it is widely regarded as a metaphor for the social problems that gripped Vietnam-era America.

Seven strangers take refuge from flesh eating ‘ghouls’ in an isolated farmhouse. As the night draws in, their situation becomes desperate, hope turns to despair, and the picket-fence American dream is smashed apart.

In 2020, as liberal values find themselves once more under threat, and we find ourselves adrift in a climate of distrust and paranoia, imitating the dog revisit George Romero’s classic zombie movie. Seven performers enter the stage armed with cameras, a box of props and a rail of costumes. Can they recreate the film, shot-for-shot before our eyes, using whatever they can lay their hands on? Against a background of historical found footage that gives a context to their task, they undertake the seemingly impossible. With 1,076 edits in 95 minutes it’s a heroic struggle. Success will require wit, skill and ingenuity and is by no means guaranteed.

Romero’s original was an apocalyptic vision of paranoia, the breakdown of community and the end of the American dream. In their new stage production, masters of digital theatre, imitating the dog, create a love-song to the original 1960s film, a remaking and remixing which attempts to understand the past in order not to have to repeat it. Their version is in turns humorous, terrifying, thrilling, thought-provoking and joyous but above all, in the retelling it becomes a searing parable for our own complex times.