“Romeo & Juliet & Zombies” by writer-performer Melody Bates is coming to Sinclair just in time for the spooky Halloween season! The show is a continuation of Shakespeare’s famous star-crossed lovers’ story “Romeo and Juliet”, even staying in Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter. The play begins in the original act five, with the premise of “What if Romeo and Juliet got a second chance?”. It’s fun and silly jam-packed with horror and humor with a revived zombie Romeo and Juliet! With a focus on a new ending in which death isn’t the end, using Verona’s plague (The Second Wave of the Black Plague) as a launching point to introduce an action-filled zombie apocalypse. Injecting more fun and a lot of gore into an already death-filled show.
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The show is directed by Gina Kleesattel with fight choreography by Gary Minyard. Gina Kleesattel is a freelance director who recently retired from The School for Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati. She worked there for 21 years as an educator. Gary Minyard is the Vice President of Education and Engagement for the Victoria Theatre Association as well as a teacher at the University of Dayton.
For a complete listing of all performances and to purchase tickets, please visit www.sinclair.edu/tickets. All showings are in Building 2, at the Blair Hall Theatre. On the main campus in downtown Dayton. At 444 W Third St, Dayton, OH 45402.
A show with such a divisive premise, adding zombies into Shakespeare – even just making a continuation story of his works – is quite a bold choice, it’s sure to be very interesting to see. Super fans of Shakespeare may turn their noses, as they’re such a stereotypically pretentious sect of literature fans. It was hard for me to put aside my own bias and decide to give the show a chance, as I am a Shakespeare fangirl. Even though it feels like an incredibly juvenile concept, I’m remarkably excited to see it! Knowing the hard work and love put into Sinclair’s Theatre Productions made me reconsider and decide to go! It certainly was a shocking choice to choose to put on a rather unknown show but it’s exciting to see productions that haven’t been done to death! Watching a gore-filled zombie plague could be just the thing we need after the last rough few years of stress, isolation, fear, and hypervigilance dealing with the constant nightmare that has been the Coronavirus Pandemic. The wanting of something playful that understands it’s fun and silly. While knowing life doesn’t have to be constantly serious, a zombie rom-com rooted in Shakespeare canon might serve to be an incredibly fun night out.
LeAnne Marie McPherson
Staff writer