Our Price to Pay
Written by Frances Smith
Presented by Deepti Aravapalli and Frances Smith with FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks
94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC
April 2-15, 2026
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L to R: Nikki Cannon (Mrs. Jones), Louis Dean (Uncle Marcus), Avaana Harvey (Ellie), James Miller (Uncle Carl), Gail Tierney (Sylvia), Corinne Kaleta (Sophia), Margo Hera (Aunt Meghan). Photo by Rainer DeLalio.
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The zombie, from its Afro-Caribbean incarnation as a corpse enslaved by a zombie master, through its reinvention as a cannibalistic ghoul, to its increasingly common contemporary representation as a victim of viral infection, has long served as a figure of political critique; so the intersection of the zombies and queerness should come as little surprise. Some zombie narratives feature explicitly queer zombies; some scholars see all zombies as queer, due to, for example, their nonnormative reproduction and loss of gender markers as they decay; and some zombie narratives focus on queer human couples, as does Frances Smith's play
Our Price to Pay. The representation of the zombie within and across its various mutations is notably flexible, and the zombies in
Our Price to Pay qualify as what scholar Chera Kee calls "extra-ordinary" zombies, zombies that are not completely dehumanized. Smith's zombies' ability to speak in particular facilitates the play's use of them to sharply critique the content and consequences of right-wing media through the lean, unpredictable, satirical story of a queer couple forced to seek shelter–and confront family–during the onset of a zombie outbreak among conservatives. Under the deft directorial hand of Emmie D'Amico,
Our Price to Pay is currently part of the
2026 New York City Fringe Festival, an open lottery-based theater festival in which one hundred percent of box office proceeds go directly to the artists, and which this year runs from April 1-19 at UNDER St. Marks, wild project, Chain Theatre, and The Rat NYC.
Our Price to Pay anchors its horror action in the realities of the romantic relationship between Sylvia (Gail Tierney) and Ellie (
Avaana Harvey), whose character name it is tempting to see as a nod to the queer protagonist of
The Last of Us franchise. The audience meets the pair as they stumble into Sylvia's Dallas, Texas, studio apartment, a little drunk and a lot into one another. Tierney and Harvey imbue Sylvia and Ellie's relationship with a real frisson, but not everything is passionate perfection: Ellie's job, which takes her away from Sylvia for long periods, emerges as a sticking point. And just as Sylvia and Ellie reach a decisive moment for their future together, the outside world intrudes in the form of Sylvia's zombified Uncle Carl (a suitably imposing James Miller), who calls them sick during his attack, a word that Sylvia will later turn back on her family in a different context. That family is holding a 4th of July barbecue–Sylvia's Aunt Meghan (
Margo Hera) continuously and hilariously documents the set up, which is also a set change, on her smartphone rather than actually helping–and it is there, given the promise of a secure basement, that Sylvia and Ellie reluctantly decide to flee, setting up for Ellie a more than typically fraught first time meeting Sylvia's conservative family. In addition to Aunt Meghan, the barbecue guests include her husband, Uncle Marcus (Louis Courage), and their children, Sophia (Corinne Kaleta) and Elijah (Mitchell WIley), and they're hosted by Sylvia's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jones (
Eric Berger and
Nikki Cannon). We have learned earlier that Sylvia's father, Gerald, is abusive, and it doesn't take long for his volatility to surface once Sylvia and Ellie arrive. Set off in contrast by Cannon's well-meaning but overmatched Mrs. Jones, Berger strikingly captures how Gerald presents his bullying as concern, a behavior typical not only of abusers but also of much of contemporary political discourse performance. And this is before the first signs of infection emerge among the barbecue-goers.
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| L to R: Nikki Cannon (Mrs. Jones), Gail Tierney (Sylvia), Avaana Harvey (Ellie), Louis Dean (Uncle Marcus). Photo by Rainer DeLalio |
The infection's infiltration of the gathering is helped along by an outdoor tv, and we might think of it along the lines of
28 Days Later's rage virus–here specifically a right-wing media-driven rage–mixed with
Pontypool's viral transmission via language. Gerald's insistence that everyone should try the extremely rare burgers invites connection to the right-wing populist reliance on so-called "red meat," as well as to the gender-normative notion that meat is manly and, the less cooked, the more manly. The play's climactic fight scene (impressively orchestrated by Fight Choreographer Brian Cecala and Fight Captain
Dyoisa Wiggins) makes great use of Dorothy's song "Black Sheep" before a quick setting change to the family basement that is cleverly accomplished with just a curtain pull and a lighting change. Alone there, Sylvia and Ellie may feel "outnumbered," and the image of being forced underground certainly thematically contrasts the freedom with which they express their love and sexual desire in the opening section of the play; but Sylvia also acknowledges that what happened between her and her family needed to happen, despite the fear of a split that she expressed back in her apartment and before zombies entered the picture, and the couple's love remains an undaunted source of resilience. While Sophia doesn't stay with them, she provides some further hope–and a great exit line. In a time that could use more hope,
Our Price to Pay gives audiences a new pair of horror heroines to root for.
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
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