Forest Theatre,
Greenside George Street
17-22 August 2026
19:35
The zombie apocalypse is upon us, & vials of Zydrax are bubbling with disintent. It’s been almost 60 years since Night of the Living Dead shuffl’d the modern zombie into popular entertainment; since then they’ve got considerably faster – especially over that memorable 28 Days Later period – before becoming thoroughly mainstream during The Walking Dead bonanza. By now, the inhabitants of the zombie universe have become almost as standardis’d as the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte: the shambling flesh-eater, the Mad Max-style gun-toting warrior, the innocent victim about to get chomp’d. We know these people. We know the rules. We know somebody, sooner or later, is getting bitten.
So how refreshing to encounter such a sexy twist on an old theme in Clydebuilt Theatre Company’s The Real Housewives of the Zombie Apocalypse – an original musical which throws seven high-camp reality-TV queens into the middle of the undead uprising. The conceit is deliciously simple: imagine a Real Housewives reunion episode where the cast have to survive not only each other, but hordes of flesh-eating zombies as well. The company itself describes it as its most “high-body-count reunion episode” yet, with the Housewives attempting to manifest their way to survival while the dead rise around them.
The show actually made its Fringe debut in 2025, where it sold out, collected four- & five-star reviews & was named MusicalTalk’s Pick of the Fringe. Clydebuilt have return’d in 2026 promising an even bigger incarnation, bringing their peculiar collision of musical theatre, reality-TV satire, camp & carnage to Greenside @ George Street’s Forest Theatre. It’s a splendidly ridiculous premise, but also a clever one: reality television already possesses its own stock characters, ritual confrontations, alliances, betrayals & spectacular emotional bloodletting. All Clydebuilt have really done is add the actual blood.
As I watch’d the show with a massive grin on my face, I didn’t realise at first that the group were Scottish – so authentic were the American accents. The music was bouncy & infectious, with hints of ABBA everywhere, the vocalists bouncing effortlessly from recitativo into great bursts of pop chorus. There’s a confidence to the musical writing which means the songs never feel like they’re stopping the action; they are the action, pushing this increasingly ridiculous apocalypse merrily onwards.
The production really is top-notch, choreograph’d to the minutest twitch as everyone moves excitedly about the stage. I also enjoy’d the clever use of leitmotifs, especially the principal theme with its wonderfully catchy “hand goes flop, shoulder goes pop” vibes, returning just enough to worm itself permanently into the brain.
The quality of the show, I think, ultimately comes from its cast. There’s pedigree & experience across the company, with several having come thro’ Glasgow Kelvin College’s musical-theatre courses, & it shows. These aren’t performers merely having fun with a bonkers premise; they can properly sing, dance & act, possessing the technical chops required to make all that carefully orchestrated chaos look effortless. That foundation of talent is what allows the production to go completely off its zombie head while remaining musically & theatrically tight. Massive praise, too, for the zombie business itself. The glow-in-the-dark effects are fantastic, transforming the stage whenever the undead emerge & giving the production a surprisingly spectacular visual dimension.
Part of the heart of it all – from playing Campbell Bruce, the producer of the TV show, to writing & creating the whole glorious thing – is John Paul Liddle, an award-winning composer of five short-film musicals & also, crucially, a Real Housewives superfan. The other part of the show’s heartbeat is Hugh Moore (floor manager & the show’s ‘Ash Wright avatar’). Hugh is the zombie fan and the one who has been immersed in the Housewives franchise for many years, Campbell is a more recent convert, & together their love of the genre – & of zombies – pours thro’ every musical note & lyrical lexeme. There’s affection behind the parody, which I think is why it works so well; they aren’t simply taking the piss out of the Housewives universe, they understand its rhythms, rituals & ridiculousness, then gleefully infects the whole thing with the undead.
The Real Housewives element concerns seven glamorous vixens, each dress’d in a slightly different colour, chatting – or rather singing – about their marriages, husbands, affairs & assorted social catastrophes. There’s another clever layer to the whole thing in their names, each borrowed from women of Greek history & mythology: Jocasta, Cassandra, Selena, Alexandra, Pandora, Elektra & Penelope. It gives these gloriously trashy reality-TV creations a strangely classical pedigree – Euripides by way of Bravo, perhaps – while reinforcing the sense that we’re watching another set of theatrical stock characters being gleefully reinvented.
Spoiler alert! As the apocalypse really gets going, it becomes a bit like playing zombie bingo, waiting to see which Housewife gets bit next & joins the ever-expanding undead pack. Each new recruit receives a slight costume alteration – a mask here, a gruesome flourish there – until the glamorous world we began with is gradually swallow’d by the zombie one. It’s a simple theatrical device, but a very effective one, especially when combined with the choreography & those tremendous glowing effects.
The Real Housewives of the Zombie Apocalypse is a maverick musical which really hits the mark – camp without becoming flimsy, technically slick without losing its silliness, & thoroughly entertaining on just about every level. Taking two cultural forms which have surely been squeez’d almost dry – zombies & reality television – Clydebuilt somehow manages to bite into both & find fresh blood.
Damo
