Review: Something to sink your teeth into

Vampires are an incredibly popular topic in modern culture and have now made their way into the theatre with Moira Buffini’s Vampire Story being shown at the Barron theatre. The play tells the story of the young women Eleanor and Claire, mother and daughter, or sisters – the audience is never quite sure. They are constantly on the move and have recently settled in to a new town where Eleanor enters school at year 12 and takes A-level drama. There she makes a friend Frank Stein, a previously home-schooled introvert, and she informs her classmates that she is a vampire. The audience accepts this initially but as the plot develops the viewer starts questioning who Eleanor and Claire really are.

Getting off to a rocky start the show soon picked up the pace and as the plot developed, laughs became more frequent. The story goes back in time as Eleanor is writing about her past, over 200 years ago for drama class, the actors made jumping between the times and various roles seem effortless. The scenes at school are comical both in drama class and especially in food technology. However the play’s deeper issues such as the comparison between the vampires sucking blood and us the consumers sucking the life from our planet never grabbed hold of the audience and they are left feeling indifferent.

Due to the different plot lines there were two sets of main characters although Emma Corcoran as Eleanor and Eveliina Kuitunen as Claire were the leads. Kuitunen was convincing as a vampire in her cold and luring portrayal of one but when it came to acting emotion she wasn’t as convincing. Corcoran gave a steady performance in her role although one never really knew what was going on in her character’s head. Many of the supporting roles were highly entertaining, perhaps the performance that stood out the most in the play was that of Anna Burslem as the hippie food technology teacher, who was a success in every scene. Fraser Craig as Frank Eleanor’s love interest and Stephen Quinn as Geoff Frank’s father were also very entertaining.

The play breaks some theatrical conventions by having the actors yell out scenes and having characters running in between time and place, fiction and reality which creates a more confusing environment. The background music too made for a more film-like feel although it sometimes got in the way of hearing the actor’s lines perfectly. Interestingly enough the play has been adapted to the film Byzantium although the ambiguity of the plot has been eliminated. 

The ending of the play leaves the audience confused both in terms of whether Eleanor and Claire are vampires or not and whether both stories could be the tormented teen’s escapism. The deeper issues of the play were also a bit awkward in their presentation. Despite this Vampire Story is an entertaining and light one hour piece, and something you can definitely sink your teeth into.