THE ZOMBIES OF PENZANCE
book and lyrics by W.S. Gilbert & Scott Miller
music and orchestrations by Arthur Sullivan & John Gerdes
Free Public Reading, January 8, 2018
Full Production Sept. 27-Oct. 20, 2018
"The world is off its hinges and the lib’rals are protecting them,
But we know what’s more fun is catching zombies and dissecting them.
It’s like that music video of Michael Jackson’s Thriller,
So I’m proud to stand before you as a modern-era zombie killer.
I don’t approve of inter-species sex (except the lower forms);
I also don’t agree with re-defining all our social norms.
I’d like to live my life without the lib’rals making fun o’ me;
I have the right to be a zombie bigot if I wanna be.
You lay a decomposing hand on any of my daughters, though,
And this retired zombie hunter can’t rule out a slaughter; no,
I’ll hunt the sons of bitches down; I’ll chase ‘em till I run ‘em raw.
I will not have a zombie for a pet or for a son-in-law!"
- "I Am the Very Model of a Modern-Era Zombie Killer"
Gilbert & Sullivan's long-lost, original "operatic abomination," in its wacky world premiere!
New Line Theatre, “the bad boy of musical theatre,” has shocked the music world by discovering a long-lost first draft by the legendary British team of librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, who together wrote fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896.
One of the team's best known works, The Pirates of Penzance, originally debuted in New York in 1879, and was revived to great success in the early 1980s with Kevin Kline, Linda Ronstadt, and Rex Smith. What we now know is that there was an earlier, stranger draft of the show, which nobody knew about until now, with most of the same characters but a somewhat different plot.
In Gilbert & Sullivan's never-before seen original draft, dated December 1878 and titled The Zombies of Penzance (with the unwieldy subtitle, At Night Come the Flesh Eaters), Major-General Stanley is a retired zombie hunter, who doesn't want his daughters marrying the dreaded Zombies of Penzance (for obvious reasons). According to documents found with the manuscripts, Gilbert and Sullivan finished work on The Zombies of Penzance in early 1879, but their producer Richard D’Oyly-Carte refused to produce it, calling it vulgar, impolitic, and unchristian, and in one letter, "an operatic abomination, an obscene foray into the darkest of the occult arts." In a letter to his cousin, Gilbert expressed his deep disappointment, writing "I fear the walking dead shall be the end of me yet."
Until now, music scholars had been baffled by that reference.
After a battle that almost ended the partnership, the team reluctantly agreed to rewrite their show, and in December 1879, D'Oyly-Carte debuted the much more conventional, revised version, The Pirates of Penzance, for which Gilbert added the characters of Ruth and the policemen, and incorporated plot devices from his 1870 work Our Island Home and from Offenbach’s The Bandits. As he had agreed, Gilbert eliminated all references to zombism in the show.
Gilbert would do a full rewrite of their next show Patience as well, completely reimagining the plot and main characters, though this time not at D’Oyly-Carte’s insistence.
In 2013, New Line artistic director Scott Miller discovered the original manuscripts for The Zombies of Penzance in the second sub-basement of the Judson Memorial Church in New York, hidden beneath some moldy band parts from Rockabye Hamlet and Shogun the Musical, and Miller set about reconstructing the bizarre original show as G&S intended. Gilbert's walking dead and their Zombie King now make their long-delayed world premiere. Miller has painstakingly reassembled these rediscovered materials into their original form, and St. Louis composer and orchestrator John Gerdes is reconstructing Sullivan's music.
Now, for the first time, audiences will be able to see and hear the comic, flesh-eating insanity Gilbert & Sullivan originally wrought. New Line will host a public reading of The Zombies of Penzance in January 2018, and then produce the show fully in October 2018, to open New Line's 28th season.
The New Line cast will include Sean Michael as Frederic, Melissa Felps as Mabel, Zachay Allen Farmer as Major General Stanley, Dominic Dowdy-Windsor as the Zombie King, with Mara Bollini, Kent Coffel, Kevin Corpuz, Robert Doyle, Evan Fornachon, Joel Hackbarth, Matt Hill, Lindsey Jones, Melanie Kozak, Sarah Porter, Christina Rios, and Kimi Short, with music direction by Sarah Nelson.
Want to explore more?
We recommend:
The rewritten version, The Pirates of Penzance, in its 1980 off Broadway revival
The cast album of the 1981 Broadway production of The Pirates of Penzance
The full orchesstral score for The Pirates of Penzance
TICKET INFO
The public reading of The Zombies of Penzance will be January 8, 2018 at 8:00 p.m. Admission to the reading is free and open to the public. Tickets for the full production will go on sale in August 2018. The Marcelle Theater is at 3310 Samuel Shepard Drive, three blocks east of Grand, in Grand Center. Click here for directions.
All programs subject to change. New Line Theatre receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission and the Missouri Arts Council.
