SCT pulls off a lively version of a zombie classic

Set aside, for a moment, the fact that Seattle Children Theatre's "Night of the Living Dead" is enacted with deadpan panache. And that it's an obvious attempt to attract more adolescents to the theater.

Let's get down to what really counts here: the Yuck Factor.

Is this live version of the cult-classic George Romero horror flick gory, grisly and ghoulish enough? Does it match the 1968 movie it's based on as an "unrelieved orgy of sadism" (as one aghast critic put it)?

Perhaps not, but as tongue-in-cheek romps about flesh-gobbling monsters go, "Night of the Living Dead" is plenty yucky. It's also pure escapist fun — for any teen (or adult) who can enjoy creature-feature camp without getting freaked by suspenseful but blatantly hokey stage savagery.

Closely following the "Night of the Living Dead" screenplay by Romero and John Russo, Lori Allen Ohm's play resurrects a B-plot that starts with two adult siblings, Johnny (Troy Fischnaller) and Barb (Sarah Harlett), having their first brush with those gosh-darn zombies in a dark cemetery.

Barb eludes her attackers, part of a mob of ghouls who've returned from the dead with rabid cannibal cravings.

She then stumbles across a remote country house and holes up there with a take-charge stranger, Ben (Reginald André Jackson), who goes all Rambo to fend off the rampaging zombie hordes.

Hiding out, too, are a squabbling married couple, Harry (Peter Jacobs) and Helen (Marianne Owen), and their suspiciously comatose young daughter.

Interspersed with frantic TV news reports (with projected montages of 1960s black-and-white news footage, cleverly compiled by Lara Kaminsky), the dire zombie vs. human battle escalates over a zippy 75 minutes of scariness and hilarity.

The actors mainly play their stock characters straight, ensuring maximum absurdity. Especially funny are Harlett, as a woman gone gaga with terror, and Owen, as a ticked-off matron who isn't about to let her idiot husband or any lurching corpses ruin her day.

The suspense is fueled by sudden zombie eruptions and the earnestly ineffectual blather of rattled TV new anchors (Galen Joseph Osier and MJ Sieber). And there are a few eerie surprises in store. (Our lips are sealed.)

When Romero's low-budget thriller first came out, it was often interpreted as a social critique of a paranoid, embattled, late-1960s America — a nation embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam and rife with mindless conformity and racism. Such analyses are not so far afield. But Romero undoubtedly was, in the time-honored tradition of horror flicks and Grand Guignol theatrics, also just trying to keep moviegoers on the edge of their seats.

Linda Hartzell's sharply timed staging, Carey Wong's claptrap set and Michael Wellborn's wily lighting are in service of the same idea at SCT.

And the acting antics — from Jackson's no-nonsense heroics and Jacobs' smarm, to the herky-jerky marching and bloody munching of the zombie brigade — never let up either. (Kudos to costume designer Rana Webber for the ultra-yucky look of the fiends.)

But the show's Devo-like dance finale (choreographed by Kathryn Van Meter) leaves you with a message the film didn't deliver. That is this: Whatever their faults are, those zombies can really get a groove on.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com