THEATRE REVIEW: Night Of The Living Dead
04.11.23 Hollywood Avondale, Auckland
Reanimating films from the dead is a staple of Leon Radojkovic’s unique theatre format, Live Live Cinema. Integrating live foley, music, and dialogue, Live Live Cinema plays with the medium of film and theatre, creating a distinct theatrical experience. This year, George Romero’s iconic 1968 cult film Night Of The Living Dead was the subject of Live Live Cinema’s newest experimentation.
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into with this performance. I knew there would be live foley and was intrigued by that concept, but didn’t know much else - I hadn’t even seen Night Of The Living Dead before! When I arrived, the theatre was packed to the point a queue had formed outside. I was in shock. I thought this would be a small niche turnout and was (ignorantly) unaware how much a live performance of this film would attract such huge audiences. But as soon as the lights dimmed and that first sound was played, I knew Live Live Cinema was truly something else. It’s an exhilarating piece of theatre and I spent most of the performance completely in awe of it all.
The film is projected onto a cinema screen with various instruments, microphones, and objects set up on the stage in front. Performers Isla Mayo and Jack Buchanan achieve a delicate balancing act of voicing the characters and creating every sound in the film. We watch Mayo and Buchanon use unexpected objects to produce familiar noises and we see a single performer split themselves between the voices of several different characters. At one point, Buchanan juggles the accents of five interrupting characters, delivering them with such precision that I almost forgot they were being performed by one person. I thought it would be impossible for two people to recreate the sound of an entire film, but Mayo and Buchanan proved me wrong. They dart across the stage in an almost choreographed dance, adding an extra layer of tension to the film. I was constantly dividing my attention between the black-and-white ‘ghouls’ on the screen and the real-life bodies of Mayo and Buchanon as they brought life to the film behind them.
There’s an interesting aspect to Live Live Cinema where the movie is almost reduced to a background set-up; the sound is what takes the centre stage. It’s a somewhat taboo experience too, with my senses constantly trying to reconcile between what I see on the screen and what I hear on stage. Live Live Cinema’s Night Of The Living Dead forces the audience to see what is usually unseen. Foley and sound design are crucial features of filmmaking, despite it often being disregarded by audiences. In an interview with Pantograph Punch, Radojkovic comments that “[folely] can go a long way towards shaping how the audience will interpret the images they are viewing, even though it generally goes largely unnoticed”.
Conversely, good foley should not draw attention to itself either. There’s an odd interplay between wanting to focus on the film and being sucked into Radojkovic’s sonic recontextualization of the film. But it is never an obvious pendulum swing between the two elements - theatre and film, present and past are fluidly intertwined. Live Live Cinema illuminates the layers upon layers of narrative that build the world and the tension of Night Of The Living Dead.
Live Live Cinema (re)imagines film for a contemporary context and uses the live performance of sound to catapult these works into the present day. From Radojkovic’s original new score to the performers’ screams on stage, we experience the film from a renewed perspective. The present is superimposed onto the past and we see the importance of seminal cinematic works such as Night Of The Living Dead within society. While there were laughs and frights, there was also an undercurrent of contemplation in the audience - Live Live Cinema confronts us with the political commentary of a text over 50 years old and exposes its relevance today.
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Book your tickets for Live Live Theatre’s Night Of The Living Dead here!
Performers: Jack Buchanan & Isla Mayo
Direction: Sophie Roberts & Sam Snedden
Musical Direction & Foley Design: Leon Radojkovic
Production: Silo Theatre