Zombie Burlesque is a campy comedy musical at Planet Hollywood, and it's the right adult show for a group that wants to laugh at least as much as it wants to ogle. It opened on Friday the 13th, in December 2013, and it is still raising the dead six nights a week. The burlesque is real. So are the jokes.
The premise: welcome to Club Z
Zombie Burlesque is set in 1958, in an America where the undead have taken over. The President has struck a truce: zombies are fed prisoners, the innocent are left alone, and the living are invited into Club Z, the zombie nightclub on the Strip, to see how the other half lives. Black-and-white newsreel clips set up the joke, and from there the show is a love letter to the horror movies of the 1940s through the 1960s, played as a swing-era floor show.
Where: V3 Theater, upstairs in the V Theater at Miracle Mile Shops, Planet Hollywood. Run time: about 75 minutes, no intermission. Ages: not recommended under 16. Schedule: Monday through Saturday. Best for: mixed groups, bachelor and bachelorette parties and horror fans with a sense of humor.
Check Zombie Burlesque tickets
Who runs the club
The host is Zenoch, a zombie emcee with a lounge singer's timing, played since opening night by Enoch Augustus Scott. He keeps the show moving, trades insults with the band and picks the volunteers. The band is live, on a raised platform at the back of the stage, playing big-band swing with a rock edge. It is called Rog X's Atomic Showband, after Rog Xavier, the show's original music director, who died during the run. Around them are the zombie showgirls, singers and dancers, more than 200 of them over the years. Producer David Saxe runs the V Theater, so the show has a home.
What actually happens on stage
It's built like an old burlesque variety bill: a song, a dance, a sketch, a specialty act, repeat. Between the fan dances and the strip-teases come an aerial silks routine, a contortionist who bends in ways a corpse probably shouldn't, and a dancing Jell-O box that shares the stage with a vodka bottle. Video segments fill the gaps. The cast improvises around the crowd, so the jokes shift from night to night. The tone is closer to The Rocky Horror Picture Show than to a strip club. Expect pasties, not nudity.
Audience participation
Several people end up on stage each night. One volunteer gets strapped into a chair inside a cage for a zombie lap dance, another ends up in the Tiny Bubbles number, and a couple, ideally newlyweds, plays a zombie version of a couples game show for a prize. Contestants get nicknames that stick for the rest of the night. Nobody is forced up. But the front rows are where Zenoch goes looking.
Where to sit
The V3 is a small room, about 200 seats, so every seat is close. VIP covers the front half with assigned seating, and that is where the cast does most of its crowd work. Rear seating covers the back half and is the calmer choice for anyone who would rather watch than join in. Seats at the far left can lose a sliver of the stage behind the room's architecture. The bar upstairs opens before the show, and guests are let in by ticket group, VIP first.
Making a night of it
The V Theater runs more than one stage, and our adults-only magic guide covers the two late shows in the V4 theater next door. To weigh Zombie Burlesque against Absinthe and The Empire Strips Back, see our Las Vegas adult shows guide. In town for Halloween? It's the natural warm-up for a night from our Las Vegas haunted houses guide. Zombies first, then the real scares.
