Review: Punk Rock Zombie Play "apocaLIPSTICK" Strikes More than Three Chords

apocaLIPSTICK

Written by Seth Barnes

Directed by Jennie Hughes

Presented by Seth Barnes, Elena Cramer, the Players Theatre Residency Program, and Forager Theatre Company at The Players Theatre

115 MacDougal St., Manhattan, NYC

November 6-23, 2025

L to R: Fara Faidzan, Ben Bogdan, Kathleen Salazar, Jordan Jackson, Clayton Matthews, Elena Cramer, Michela Richards. Photo by Samori Etienne.

Anyone who frequents metal or punk shows knows that when someone falls in the pit, you pick that person up. That communal etiquette does not, however, extend to zombies, as we see in the opening scene of apocaLIPSTICK, a new play from Seth Barnes set in a United States reshaped by the zombie apocalypse. Following two members of a punk band called The Dammit Janets on their cross-country search for their friend and third member, with whom they had lost contact, apocaLIPSTICK integrates live music and zombie-attack action into a narrative that, similarly to Forager's December 2024 production of The Hand That Feeds You, also directed by company founder Jennie Hughes, uses horror and monstrosity as a catalyst for a compelling exploration of its human characters' struggles to define themselves and their place in the world. The fears in the fun and funny apocaLIPSTICK are as much about the desire to be loved and needed as they are about being messily devoured by a walking corpse.

In the play's post-apocalypse, radio has regained its primacy as a means of mass communication (one area of the set even features an impressive prop radio tower), and we hear the staticky snippets of someone flipping through the dial before the lights come up on Bonnie (Elena Cramer) and Finn (Ben Bogdan) of the Dammit Janets (the actors all play their own instruments, and Cramer wrote some of the show's music), named, of course, for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, playing a gig in a Tewksbury, NJ, venue that's a bit of a come-down from the places in NYC that the apocalypse has allowed them to perform. While it emerges in a post-show conversation with the venue's promoter (Nick Baum, also the fight choreographer for apocaLIPSTICK's stompy, sanguinary zombie encounters) that New York is even worse than rumored, the pair have left the city less to escape danger than to seek out Rose (Jordan Jackson), the band's guitarist and lead singer and Bonnie's longtime BFF. Bonnie and Finn, an affable drummer whose favorite adjective is "tight," move west, encountering various people, including a postapocalyptic librarian (Kathleen Salazar, whose entertainingly off-kilter performance is complemented by a jacket that looks like flowered upholstery studded with, to borrow a term from Office Space, pieces of flair), a tattoo artist (Nick Baum again, bringing completely different energies to his two human roles), and a community of modern-day hippies–as well as the undead. As they do so, the narrative flashes back to the before-times, including Finn's first practice with the band and, even further back, to Rose and Bonnie's high-school days. Through these juxtapositions of past and present, it becomes clear that the vital question is not only whether they will find Rose but also why Bonnie is so unwaveringly committed to this quest.

Scholars have noted that characters in apocalyptic media, rather than taking advantage of the opportunity to pursue alternative ways of being provided by the collapse of society, often set about merely recreating the same oppressive systems that existed in the pre-apocalypse. Bonnie's character both aligns with this tendency and represents its psychological and emotional analogue on an individual level. In this new world, Bonnie has no desire to move on from her and Rose's shared past, which she views with (please excuse the pun) extremely rose-colored glasses, and she is highly resistant to anything (or anyone) that threatens the status quo of their relationship. Even without flesh-eating monsters involved, growing up and growing apart can be a kind of apocalypse when one is young (if nothing else, adulthood makes it much harder to keep playing basements and dive bars in an unsigned band).

Intertwined with these themes are questions of collectivity. apocaLIPSTICK is filled with different types of community: a band itself is a kind of communal group; a music scene is a type of community, as are the shows where its members come together; the hippies and their barter system are doing well enough to have craft stands and a concert series; and the radio, which can create yet another type of community in listeners, broadcasts messages from the Blood Children–a group that Bonnie insists on calling a cult–who argue for putting the "we" ahead of the "I." The Blood Child who makes these broadcasts (Michela Richards, who also plays a hippie broadcaster with a bit of a Cheech and Chong vibe) asserts that we could learn something from the zombies, who don't kill one another, question their existence, or lose faith in themselves. While Finn is open to connecting with this message and others, Bonnie's insistent need to keep moving towards Rose (and perhaps thus towards her own past) means that she cannot stop to make any other connections, an aspect of the play that works as both character study and social microcosm.

apocaLIPSTICK adeptly captures that feeling of dive bar shows (the dreams, the frustrations, the bad food, the camaraderie), as well as the sense of adventure in traversing a zombie-filled U.S.A. transformed into something simultaneously familiar and strange. The production's "enzomble" (Sascha Henryk, Clayton Matthews, and Fara Faidzan) provides both some excellent zombie acting and more live punk during scenes changes and as part of the production's fantastic final scene, which deftly knits together all of the show's thematic threads within a rousing, emotional musical climax. Bogdan makes Finn an appealing figure: genuinely decent, friendly, and loyal, though, as we find out, with limits. Jackson inhabits Rose's complexities: she tinges Rose's flirty encounter with Owen (Kathleen Salazar), from a more successful band, with a hint of self-promotion; she is self-aware and vulnerable as Rose wrestles with her own path and a difficult mother; and she makes movingly visible how the apocalypse has changed Rose. As Bonnie, Cramer is not afraid to lean into her character's flaws (which sometimes are agonizingly close to being virtues) and does so without sacrificing any of Bonnie's (wounded) humanity. You should absolutely join Finn and Bonnie on their post-apocalyptic punk rock journey, but maybe brush up on your "Time Warp" before you do,

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards