It’s 1999. In only a matter of hours, the opening night curtain will rise on a new production from a Sydney community theatre troupe, and the director George is determined to keep his cast rehearsing.

“You’re killing it,” he shouts from the auditorium, and he doesn’t mean that in a positive way.

With a major theatre critic attending, he pushes the performers to lift their game. The dream, after all, is to become a Pro-Am company, so they can regularly afford to pay a “D-grade celebrity” to take on a leading role – which George has secretly done here, casting Dave, who’s not even sure what an audition is.

Little do they know that “killing it” is about to take on a new meaning, for outside the theatre, a highly infectious disease is spreading like wildfire. Could it be to do with Y2K?

When Dave absconds, having been offered a role in Rent, he’s back before they know it, bitten not by the theatre bug, but by a flesh-eating zombie.

Ryan Gonzalez in Zombie! The Musical. Photo © John McRae

So begins Zombie! The Musical, the riotous new show from Laura Murphy...