The director John Tiffany has been seen often enough in daylight that vampirism seems unlikely. But the man is certainly a mesmerist.
To sit in the midst of the audience at Let the Right One In, now arrived in Brooklyn by way of Dundee and London, is to watch a crowd in thrall. And why not? Tiffany’s merging of theatrical elements – the lights, the sound, the costumes, the set – is masterly. And the movement work of associate director Steven Hoggett ensures that this particular tale, a stage adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s modern vampire story, is more than just live cinema.
On Christine Jones’s set, bare birch trunks stretch upwards like a warren of bones. Snow blankets the ground and a single streetlight casts a curdled glow over a brutalist climbing frame. Into that chill landscape – half Scotland, half Sweden – enter Oskar (Cristian Ortega), a bullied boy, and Eli (Rebecca Benson), a seeming age mate who has just moved in next door. But, as Eli says, “I’m nothing. Not a child. Not old. Not a boy. Not a girl. Nothing.” Eli might well be a vampire – she drinks blood, can’t bear daylight, flies without benefit of jetpack – though that word never appears in the play.
Of course, Oskar, lonely and vulnerable – smothered by his drunken mother, abused by boys in school – falls in love with Eli. He wants to be her saviour, her knight. “I need to rescue you from the dragon basically,” he says.
“What if I’m the dragon?” Eli asks.
“I don’t want to fight the dragon then,” says Oskar.
“OK. I’ll be the princess,” says Eli obligingly.
But few princesses accrue such a body count or smear themselves with so much blood. An exciting and assured concatenation of genre, Let the Right One In is a romance and a fairytale and a thriller and a chiller and a pretty thoughtful meditation on difference.
Jack Thorne’s adroit adaptation allows both emotional complexities and jump-in-your-seat scares. It doesn’t prettify the bond between Eli and Hakan (Cliff Burnett), Eli’s elderly lackey, and it doesn’t glorify or glamorise the violence that perpetuates Eli’s life – though you might wish a few of the killing scenes felt less like dances. It makes you champion Oskar and Eli even as you know their love (if love is something Eli feels) will only lead to more death, more gore.
Neither Ortega nor Benson reads as young as the actors who played these roles in the films. Both appear in their mid teens, which intensifies some of the sexual content of their relationship while undoing some of its strangeness. Still, Ortega easily conveys Oskar’s wounded heart, while Benson, without the aid of special makeup or special effects (well, not many special effects), gives Eli a shivery otherworldliness. Her voice is somehow young and ancient, chill and yearning – the effect is as terrifying as it is pitiful. (The acting by the rest of the corps is variable.)
Admittedly, the piece, which stretches a little over two hours, has occasional longueurs, places where the plot snags or cedes to atmosphere. But there are also moments that leave story behind in the service of pure theatricality, using music and dance to convey convoluted emotional states that words – or cinematic montage – would struggle to convey.
Leave your crosses, your stakes, your garlic at home and welcome this show in.
