Horror story that’ll tug at your heart
Let The Right One In (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester)
Verdict: Let this one in ★★★★✩ A Dead Body In Taos
(Wilton’s Music Hall, London)
Verdict: Sketchy sci-fi ★★★✩✩
HOW do you feel about horror stories? Some won’t go near them, even armed with a crucifix and bottle of holy water. But inside many a fright-fest lies a fairy tale, trying to get out.
That was definitely the case with John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel about Oskar, a bullied adolescent in suburban 1980s Stockholm who befriends young vampire Eli, after she moves in next door. (The book was adapted by Lindqvist himself for the Swedish film of the same name).
And Bryony Shanahan’s mesmerising revival of Jack Thorne’s 2013 adaptation sinks its fangs into the story’s jugular a f r e s h . . . with pleasingly creepy results.
It captures the sense of a local community, and nails the agonies of puberty, thanks to extraordinary chemistry between its leads, Pete MacHale and Rhian Blundell.
‘I’m not sure I’m very good for you, Oskar,’ Eli warns our hero, almost comically, as the two kids try to figure each other out.
Remarkably, despite the frights and blood-letting, there is an almost folksy emotional core. The pair seem hypnotised by each other’s innocence.
MacHale is vulnerable, gawky yet brave. Blundell is direct, brutal yet cagy.
Shanahan’s production is a vast improvement on its premiere at London’s Royal Court. Here, frequent scene changes between home, school gym, sweet shop, playground and swimming pool are fluidly integrated. Among many nice touches, Eli’s victims are swept up in a crowd; a swimming pool is suggested by an empty stage and dry ice; between scenes the cast mop up the blood. Performed in the round, the backdrop remains the audience itself and Shanahan cunningly implicates us in the action. So yes, some of the shocks make you jump and squirm, but more than that, it’s a tale with a wistful, old-school heart.
■ ANOTHER kind of fairy tale is the idea that humans might one day curate our own digital afterlife. This is the lofty premise of A Dead Body In Taos, a new sci-fi drama by David Farr — a fine playwright now best known for TV series The night Manager — currently on at Wilton’s Music Hall.
It’s what is dubbed a highconcept story (big idea, minimal plausibility), focusing on a young woman, Sam, whose estranged mother is found dead in the new Mexico desert, near Taos.
It turns out that before she died, Mum Kath had her consciousness uploaded to a specialist server, where she’s now enjoying life as an algorithm and talking like Alexa.
Sadly, for all the slick efficiencies of Rachel Bagshaw’s production and Ti Green’s minimalist set, the clever idea overshadows the human drama.
Farr might have dug deeper into Sam (Gemma Lawrence) and her paradoxical need for her mother to be more sincerely dead, rather than just passed over to the internet.
As her mum, Eve Ponsonby oscillates between her robotic future self (a monotone hologram) and her younger self — a 1960s student revolutionary.
One aspect of the production which looks increasingly like a real future, alas, is the projection of dialogue across the set (also seen recently at the national Theatre’s Dorfman). This may be great for the hard of hearing, but it totally upstages the actors. Let’s hope it’s not the shape of thing to come.