I think I had better come clean: I didn’t get this.  I’m not sure there was anything to get, but every time I convinced myself of this, something would make me think again.  The play was based on poetry, which, as any English student will tell you, always means something; and perhaps I missed the point of the ring composition.  Then again, Zombie Haiku could just be a waste of everybody’s time.

This is a forty minute presentation of the frame of a play that is incoherent and lacks all purpose.  The complete dialogue would fit into my 400 word limit for this article several times over, but no profundity lay within the brevity.  Exchanges tended to be even more mundane and predictable than real life, which is quite a feat when you are meant to be depicting a zombie apocalypse.  One scene consists of only three words: ‘For fuck's sake.’  Quite.

Most of the duration is padded out with highly stylised, heavily choreographed ensemble physical theatre, accompanied by what I can only describe as the director Chloe Mashiter’s theme tune.  For what it’s worth, the ensemble was slick and well-coordinated, but ‘neat’ theatre just for the sake of it strikes me as rather pointless.  One man’s journey to work was presented, it seemed, to show that the director could give the impression of a crowded tube train on stage; clever, yes, but with this purpose only, why do it?

The cast are mainly novices, but the fact that little more was demanded of them than prolonged vacant stares and moving in time to the director’s signature soundtrack meant that any acting frailties that may have existed went unexposed.  A noticeably strong performance came from Michael Campbell, but he is already well-established as a class act, while Lizzie Schenk and Charlie Bindels were given just enough of a chance to show that they would be deserving of more substantial opportunities in the future.

I could try and defend this play as an innocent piece of zombie-riffic fun, but I would be wasting my breath.  It wasn’t funny and didn’t seem to be making any attempt to get the audience laughing – at least, I sincerely hope it wasn’t.  I suppose a one star play deserves a one star summarising line: Zombie Haiku presents the bare bones of a play that is not – and never should be – fleshed out.