Brew of the Dead (Under St. Marks)

BOTTOM LINE: What Scream did for slasher movies, Brew of the Dead does for zombie flicks.

Okay, so let me set the scene for you - you're in the East Village, next to several fine falafal establishments, at Under St. Marks, a dark, gritty little venue whose basement theater is the perfect spot for the Dysfunctional Theater Company's Brew of the Dead.

Written by Patrick Storck and directed by Justin Plowman, Brew of the Dead begins, as the title suggests, with beer accompanied by music videos featuring zombies and other various forms of decomposition projected onto a white onstage drop. Toward the end of the pre-show, there's an interview clip of a lovely little girl, who, as she herself predicts, "will not survive the zombie apocolypse." Enter the five survivors of the aforementioned apocolypse, on their quest to find the perfect fort for their last stand, a brewery.

The fast and funny script is a mocking love letter to every zombie movie made in the past 15 years, complete with a few of the character archtypes we know and love - the edgey, trigger-happy hipster, the battle-grizzled father figure, and, of course, the honorary Frat Pack dude (a hilarious Peter Schuyler) - and references to everything from The Evil Dead to this summer's Hamlet. There's even a touch of the classic silent movie experience with a few narrative title cards flashed up on screen, though I'm guessing the one's back in the '20s and '30s never asked the audience "So...What's up?"

Brew of the Dead is a cleverly written send-up of a bunch of the movies you're gonna be seeing around late October, and the immediacy of a basement blackbox theater, a genuine love of the zombie genre, and the fun that prevades this production make it an awesome way to kick off the Halloween season.

(Brew of the Dead plays at Under St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Place. Show times are Oct. 4, 11, 18, 25 and Nov. 1, all at 10:30pm. Tickets are $15 and $12 for students and seniors. To purchase tickets visit smarttix.com or call 212.868.4444. Visit horsetrade.info for more show information.)