Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Photo by Jonathan Slaff ©2025  The girls of the High School are chatty: Allison Troesch, Nicole Patullo, Erin Salm (foreground), Cara S. Liander, Macah Coates.

At least the makeup design was decent.  From the music to the direction to the book to the lighting design, every aspect of My Boyfriend is a Zombie was a misstep, misdirection, or mistake.  The show opens with the Zombette greeting the audience in classic narrator fashion.  She tells us that we will be going to 1958 when one time a zombie fraternized with a human, that zombies were not always perceived simply as horrible monsters, and that a lot of fun and intrigue await us in Springtown, New York where the show takes place.  Unfortunately, nothing but pedantic dialogue, confusing direction, and soporific songs await us. 

My Boyfriend is a Zombie is subtitled “A 50’s Rock Musical.”  From the old time records that hang from the ceiling and the walls and comprise almost the entirety of the set design for the show, one expects catchy, spirited, and enjoyable songs in the style of the 50’s.  One hopes that they may have something to do with the plot.  They do not.  One hopes that the singers would imbue the lyric with some meaning.  They do not.  Most egregious of all, however, is the writing of the songs themselves.  While the pastiche quality of the music captures glimpses of tunefulness, the misaccents and false rhymes that burgeon constantly throughout the score make the songs very difficult to listen to.  This is especially problematic because “50’s rock” thrived with carefully constructed and well crafted lyrics.

Photo by Jonathan Slaff ©2025  Matthew Hooper, Jeremy Lardieri, Lenin Alevante as the three High School punks.

William Electric Black wrote the book, music—Gary Shreiner shares the music credit with him, and lyrics, and he directed the show as well.  Needless to say, he may have benefited from some collaboration.  Three mic stands stand downstage—one down left, one down right, and the other down center.  The actors tend to, at seemingly random moments, wander over to a mic and face the audience.  When a song comes, often a character will break the flow of the drama to walk to one of the mics and start singing.  This made the staging pretty nonsensical and jarring throughout the whole show.  It also made the tone rather inconsistent.  It wasn’t even that the fourth wall was sometimes down and sometimes up.  It was usually at some vague unknown midpoint that kept the audience frustrated and unable to invest in the action.

Luckily, some of the actors decided to really give it their all despite their surroundings.  Verna Hampton plays five different roles and plays them each with gusto and confidence.  Jamaal Kendall plays the title zombie, Grrr.  Though he doesn’t say much, his physicality is spot on, he looks amazing—that makeup, and his garbles, especially his sung garbles, provide a few moments of genuine humor.  In the ensemble, Matthew Hooper stands out as the most committed actor and the one having the most fun.  He has an infectious smile and joy of performing.  I found myself longing to share his excitement in the proceedings.  Sad to say, though, with the lifeless score and inane story, My Boyfriend… left me dead as a zombie.