While I’m not sure this trailer does it justice Opening Night of the Living Dead has been showing at this year’s Edinburgh Festival in what could be the most zombie filled Festival ever.

Lydia’s role in Romeo and Juliet is the perfect chance to convince an agent she’s worth putting on his books. If only her co-star, Laurence, would stick to the script rather than obsessing over his character. The only support she gets is from the director, Hector, who is doing everything he can backstage to hold together a lousy show.

Meanwhile Joe is admiring Lydia from the tech box; but the two could never be star cross’d lovers. Techies and actors are from two completely different families. If only Joe had a good opportunity to talk to her…

Like a zombie invasion! The cast of Montagues and Capulets might be eating each other’s brains but can something as silly as a rising of the undead get in the way of true love? After all the show must go on…

Find out more about the production at the official site.

I caught up with self proclaimed ‘celebrated expert’ Dr Dale and his team of 4 experts as they delivered the first of 24 seminars at the Edinburgh Fringe in a show designed to save your life. His experts were specialists in ‘weapons and defence’, ‘counselling’, ‘science and research’ and ‘survival’ and had the makings of a fine, if unconventional zombie survival team.

The seminar only dealt with a specific type of zombie, the kind that

1) Was actually dead
2) Transmitted infection through biting
3) The brain must be destroyed to stop it
4) Is incurable

This type of zombie was chosen as it was the least likely for them to be proven wrong!

In this particular seminar the audience were asked which of the 4 experts would be given the majority of the time, and Malcolm, the councellor was chosen. Dressed in similar garb to an 80′s childrens TV presenter, Malcolm led us through a few excercises from the conventional ‘how to help a team member by listening’, to the more experimental ‘how to councel yourself with your own sock’ all while trying to creepily become romantically involved with the science expert in the team.

The last section threw the floor open to questions from the audience which mixed the serious with the farcical from how not to deal with zombies using fire, to how to kill zombies using only a pilchard sandwich. We also learned that no life insurance policy will insure against zombie bite, and that any team should have a member they’re willing to sacrifice as a decoy in an emergency, in this case Malcolm.

Great entertainment for all earns this show 4 zombies out of 5.

Check out HTSAZA’s site or if you want to see for yourself How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse is playing at the Edinburgh Fringe at

Zoo Southside
Edinburgh
7th – 31st Aug
7.45pm

And if you’re on Facebook you can win tickets here.

Other zombie related shows to look out for at the Ed Fringe this year include Chomp: A Zombie Musical, Zombie Prom, Zombie based stand-up from Tiernan Douieb in 28 Years Later and Opening Night of the Living Dead which mixes zombies and Shakespeare.