Arts & Entertainment
Smithtown Arts: Night of the Living Dead Mafia
Long Island Horror-Comedy Troupe performs Candelabra Theater at the Mills Pond House.
Even though he portrays a zombie year round, the "Deadfather" (Adam Ginsberg) prefers Halloween to be just once a year.
"If it was every day it would not be special," Ginsberg said, who is co-founder of the theater troupe Living Dead Mafia. "Too much of a good thing is not always a good thing."
This Halloween weekend the troupe will finish up a series of performances at the Mills Pond House in St. James. The group, which had its first show in 2008 at the Elks Lodge in Smithtown, presents three different shows.
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One takes place in hell and purgatory, following a dead mafia leader named Salvatore Rizzo (The "Deadfather") who wants to take over hell from the devil. The other shows are the zombie drama Qualia: Origins of the Dead and Even Later, a variety/talk show lead by The Deadfather.
After Halloween, the fun doesn't end for the members, which includes actors with names like The Warrior Witch (Elsie Ginsberg), Dr. Fingers (Robert Frankenberg) and Lucifer Pimpits Jones (Brendan Noble). Although the theater show is the bread and butter of the group's WitchWitch Productions, the Living Dead Mafia idea has branched out as a band, an acoustic comedy act, haunted houses and the podcast Pod of the Dead.
"It dawned on us that by forming the band, we could keep the project going year round and do performances without having to do the entire show, find a venue, actors and so on," Ginsberg said. "The motivation was to keep performing year round, exposing WitchWitch Productions' projects and not be trapped in Halloween only as a company."
After Halloween they will start scoping out gigs for the band, while making plans for the next round of theater shows. Those may come soon, as they are currently brainstorming a Living Dead Mafia Christmas show at Mills Pond House for December.
Ironically enough, Ginsberg and the other members will actually be taking the day off on Halloween.
"For the last few years we have worked on Halloween," he said. "This year we purposely took that day off. We plan to go have some fun visiting some of the local haunted houses."
