Rorschach Theatre knows it’s difficult to stage a truly scary story. Instead of going for cheap thrills, Night of the Living Dead goes for deep laughs—the kind that makes you clutch your stomach—at least until the lights go off. Then you can’t help but wonder: What exactly is lurking behind you?

Not unlike the 1968 George A. Romero film it’s based on, this Lilli Hokama-directed stage version of Night of the Living Dead poses a handful of questions: Is the cellar safer than the living room? (Six of one, half a dozen of the other.) Who should be in charge? (You’re fucked either way.) Who survives in a zombie apocalypse? (No one.) 

With an absolutely brilliant cast of comedians, the play opens, as the film does, on Barbara (Mollie Greenberg) and Johnny (Taylor Stevens) arriving at the cemetery to place flowers on dear old dad’s gravestone. Johnny delivers his iconic line, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara,” shortly before the zombies actually come and get him for dinner. Greenberg, funny from the jump, drones on about sunset and her brother’s drinking habits. But she quickly spirals into the horror trope of Freaked Out Girl as she takes shelter in what appears to be an empty farmhouse.

Frank Labovitz has done an outstanding job on the set, which for the most part is the farmhouse’s living room (with a quick push of the couch or fabric draped atop it, the set also becomes the cellar and the cemetery). Through slats by the door to the “outside,” the audience can see zombies lurking, and the boarded-up windows give the room a sinister feel. Like other Rorschach productions, this one does not take place in a theater but instead sets up shop in a two-story former retail space along Connecticut Avenue NW. 

The house obviously isn’t empty, though. We’re quickly introduced to our hero Ben (James Stringer Jr.), wannabe leader and family man Harry (Erik Harrison giving serious Richard Dreyfus in Jaws vibes), his wife Helen (Karina Hilleard), and a few other would-be survivors. I’ll try my best to avoid spoilers, but with a 55-year-old movie, the grace period has expired. The first act of the play ends as tragically as the movie does. (Though the comedy really pulls this punch and I, for one, am all right with that.) As Hollywood Reporter put it in 2018, the film’s shocking end made Romero’s story “one of the most socially relevant horror movies to ever emerge from the darkened corners of America’s history.”

But if you think for a minute that this play is taking a serious turn—worry not. The second half draws inspiration from a choose-your-own-adventure book, testing out different hilarious, but still deadly, scenarios. Although it continues to toy with ideas of race and gender originally put forth by the film and enacted most succinctly by Sheriff McClelland (Adrian Jesus Iglesias) and his deputy (Andrew Quilpa), it does what all good comedy achieves: It makes you laugh when otherwise you could cry.

Zombies, since at least 1968, have been used as a storytelling vehicle to explore the depravity of society. From Night of the Living Dead to its 1978 sequel, Dawn of the Dead, to this generation’s The Walking Dead, zombies may overrun the Earth, but it’s the humans who become the true monsters. That is perpetually apparent in Hokama’s Night of the Living Dead, but like a good comedy, she doesn’t force you to dwell on the bad. 

Instead, each time the scene rewinds, which happens before your eyes with delightful physicality, the actors are somehow bloodier and more disheveled than before. Who or what is in the cellar becomes a recurring punchline that made me laugh out loud every single time. When the time comes for a musical number (“Work Together” written by Christopher Bond, Jamie Lamb, and Trevor Martin), it’s increasingly impressive that this ensemble can keep such straight faces while singing the most absurd lines. I can’t tell you any of them now, though, because I was laughing too hard to write anything down.

Like most good zombie stories, Rorschach Theatre’s Night of the Living Dead will have you questioning if anyone would survive this apocalypse, but unlike the rest, it will leave you smiling while you contemplate humanity.

Rorschach Theatre’s Night of the Living Dead, adapted from George A. Romero’s film, written by Christopher Bond, Dale Boyer, and Trevor Martin, and directed by Lilli Hokama, runs through Nov. 19 at 1020 Connecticut Ave. NW. rorschachtheatre.com. $20–$50.