Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Laura Atherton, Morgan Bailey, Luke Bigg, Will Holstead, Morven Macbeth, Matt Prendergast, Adela Rajnovic.

To combine the precision of a cinematic lens and the immediacy and freedom that the theatre provides is to perhaps immerse an audience into a noirish cascade of emotional uncertainty, one that leaves them breathless, suitably claustrophobic in their minds and one that gives the senses free reign to relish, to take absolute pleasure in the psychological fear that out there in the world is a disease that has the potential to place humanity in danger.

Despite some opposition, Night Of The Living Dead is a film deserving the bestowed epithet of classic, a film that captured the imagination but also managed to convey that same sense of paranoia that brought Orson Wells praise and criticism in equal measure as he took to the radio and brought part of America to its wits end, convincing them that The War Of The Worlds was real.

Imitating The Dog are not afraid of tackling the demanding subjects, of setting their sights on the historical art and giving them a life unseen by others, and in their presentation of Night Of The Living Dead Remix, cinema, theatre and the allusion of real history are encased on stage as one dynamic and persuasive piece of art, the mystery of the original black and white film playing out above the cast, the filmed version acted out scene for scene on stage and finally those scenes given the tight, almost supremely myopic, single lens version of the mood created and the unbound tension that unfolds, layer by layer until what is left is an examination of history itself.

Set against the backdrop of some the more explosive elements of 1960’s America, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and J.F.K, of the Vietnam War and in part the psychological effect of the Cold War and all its potential fall out, Imitating The Dog’s immersive and surrounding style is one that holds the George A. Romero mystic in high esteem. The blurring of boundaries is one that certainly leaves the audience scanning round the stage, never allowing the eyes to remain still, an effect on the brain which is designed to bring the tantalising feel of fear right to the heart of the watcher’s psyche.

To feel the emotional bond of what is still a shocking ending and to hear the momentous speech by the incredible Morgan Bailey as he takes on Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech in Washington, is to be placed at the centre of not only a film, of a dramatically inspired play, but of a moment in history, is to place yourself in the cruelty of life and the hope that you could change the storm that followed.

Brutal, challenging and heroically captivating, Night Of The Living Dead Remix is a story that once more questions the sincerity of modern America, and Western Europe’s approach to race relations; sincerely stimulating and positively elegant.

Ian D. Hall