Music and Lyrics by Mark Hollmann
Book and Lyrics by Greg Kotis
October 1-24, 2026

ZM (zombie musical)

“in the spirit of Little Shop of Horrors or bizarre episodes from
The X-Files, The Outer Limits, or Black Mirror, it makes
for a fun horror story. . . another winning, off-kilter musical.”
– Mark Bretz, Ladue News

“It's highly entertaining and a good showcase for an excellent cast."
– Michelle Kenyon, Snoop’s Theatre Thoughts

“I’m glad that the company still makes daring choices.
Local theater would be poorer without adventurous programming.”
– Gerry Kowarsky, Two on the Aisle

First there was URINETOWN. Then came YEAST NATION. And now... brace yourself... ZM!

New Line Theatre opened its 35th season with the American premiere of this gloriously unhinged new meta-musical from certified chaos merchants Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis — the Tony-winning mad geniuses behind Urinetown — who looked at musical theatre and said, “What if… but weirder?”

Part Walking Dead, part Bat Boy, and part “you probably shouldn’t eat that,” ZM is a darkly comic fable set in an American small town where a fast-food chain is test-marketing a new chicken sandwich. Which turns customers into zombies. Two brave teenage employees must risk everything to infiltrate corporate headquarters, uncover the truth, and maybe -- just maybe -- ask, “Should we have read the ingredients list?”

You'll laugh so hard you'll never eat fast food again!

Americans eat 17,000 Chicken McNuggets every second, we buy 5,000,000 buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken every month, and we spend $10,000,000,000 on Chick-fil-A sandwiches every year -- all of which lends ZM an uncomfortable and hilarious reality.

Originally commissioned by True Love Productions, Kotis and Hollmann began developing ZM in 2013 during a five-day writers’ retreat. Thirteen years, multiple workshops, and at least a few questionable snacks later, the show lumbered its way to its first fully staged production — in Spanish — in Mexico City in 2024. New Line's was the first full production in English, making New Line the only company brave (and unsupervised) enough to produce all three Kotis-Hollmann musicals: Urinetown (2007, 2022), Yeast Nation (2018), and ZM (2026).

The New Line cast included John Lucas (as Barnabas Young), Adeline Hudelson (Mercy Rider), Kenya Devine (Lydia Light), Jeff Loeffler (William Hutt), Leah Connolly (Billie Hutt, Jr.), Robert Hanson (Hippy John), Kathleen Dwyer (Henrietta Cooke), Steph House (Anna Cole), Jacob Brewer (Junius Hampton), Bee Mecey (Julia Hempstead), Tawaine Noah (Solomon Dyer/ Abraham Hutt), Lamarkus Jones, (Enoch Brown/ Jacob Hutt), and Daniel Chioco (Uriah Higgins). The show was directed by Scott Miller and Chris Moore, with music direction by Jason Eschhofen, choreography by Livy Potthoff, sound design by Ryan Day, scenic design by Dr. Rob Lippert, costume design by Madeline Trinity, lighting design by Eric Wennlund, and original orchestrations by New Liner John Gerdes. ZM was presented by arrangement with the authors.

ZM was New Line's third zombie musical, after Night of the Living Dead in 2013 and The Zombies of Penzance in 2018. (If you count Be More Chill and Reefer Madness as zombie musicals — and honestly, at this point, why not — ZM was New Line's fifth. Someone should check on them.)