★★★
As the audience settles down in The Cockpit to the sound of spooky music, it is clear that no one is prepared for the genre-defying spectacle The Highgate Vampire on the way. The lights dim, the phones disappear, and the actors walk on stage.
The Highgate Vampire is a fun play based on the 70s urban legend of the titular “Highgate Vampire”. Centred around two vampire hunters, Sheffield (vampire hunter by night only) and Farringdon (a priest), the play explores the public fascination and media frenzy that so often comes alongside the supernatural, and the very unusual places that it can lead. James Demaine and Alexander Knott (writer-actors) envelop the audience in a frame narrative that blurs where the story ends and the theatre begins. Performed here in the round, the audience is drawn into something far too engrossing to call itself a lecture, complete with lights, smoke, a séance and numerous re-enactments, albeit with some reluctance from Sheffield.
What begins as an academic lecture quickly descends into a chaotic, though thoroughly entertaining, frame narrative involving call and response, surrealist theatre and even, believe it or not, a dance number. Demaine’s role as the eccentric tobacconist Farringdon is well complemented by the smug, uptight, and at times downright insufferable Sheffield, played by Knott.
Highlights include a dog played by an empty leash, everything that Audrey (Zöe Grain) does (her role goes far beyond the lights), and an appropriately catchy song about catching vampires (that wasn’t just for the pun—I want that thing on Spotify). Churchgoing bricklayers, however, are advised to give this one a miss, but everyone else is sure to love the blatant disrespect for Catholicism and the fourth wall. I think I can, without giving away any spoilers, reveal that the biggest twist was that the audience has, all that time, been watching a play.
There are some genuine moments of connection between Farringdon and Sheffield as their relationship develops from rivalry to petty bickering to, finally, grudging respect. It’s incredibly entertaining, and at times even moving, to watch the friendship between the two vampire hunters blossom, as they discover that the real vampire was, of course, the members of the public they drove to paranoia along the way.
Words by Matilda Cecil
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