Campy, sexy Las Vegas Strip hit turns 10
“Zombie Burlesque” turned 10 last week. It turned 7 for me. It took about three years for me to see this show.
I was not sold on the ’50s-horror-movie theme. The description of a zombie musical in Vegas, where hardly any musicals survive, seemed hopelessly corny. The show was staged in a theater that might have been better used for storage space.
But wow-baby, I was wrong about that. Producer David Saxe’s incessant needling about the campy production paid off. I watched that first show with a couple of friends, while working on a magazine profile of Saxe and his V Theater at Miracle Mile Shops empire.
I was doubled over by the time the dancing Jell-O box and Smirnoff bottle showed up on stage — a foretelling of Jell-O shots for the whole crowd.
The show’s “Dead Sexy” description is on the money. The show performs Mondays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. at V Theater’s 200-seat V3 Theater.
Saxe checked in last week to note the show’s 10th anniversary, once more giving us a nudge. We’ll be back. Until then, 10 fun facts about the show.
10: The plot depicts humans and zombies agreeing that zombies are provided food in the form of prisoners. In exchange, the zombies will not eat innocent people. As a bonus, humans get access to the swanky Z Theater nightclub.
9: “Zombie” opened Dec. 13, 2013, or 12/13/13, on Friday the 13th.
8: Emcee Enoch Augustus Scott and Sophia Monica are the show’s remaining two original cast members.
7: More than 200 performers have appeared in “Zombie Burlesque” over the past decade.
6: Adrian Zmed of “T.J. Hooker,” “Grease 2” and “Dance Fever” fame, appeared as a guest headliner in Scott’s role as Zenoch.
5: As of the 10th anniversary, the show has performed 3,755 times.
4: The show was the last to perform before the pandemic shutdown of March 2020; Monday’s show was its 666th since reopening in October 2021.
3: The show has 30,000 strips of Topstick double-sided grooming tape used for fastening pasties.
2: “Girth Brooks” “Willy Nelson” and “Harry and the Hendersons” have been used as nicknames in the “Zombies Couples Game Show” segment.
1: After the beloved original music director Rog Xavier, nickname of Rog X died, the band was renamed Rog X’s Atomic Showband.
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John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.