DARK FANGTASY IN A SCAFFOLDING CITY
For this compact and creepy little atmospheric treat, John Donnelly turns to vampires. That’s not a spoiler: the programme is full of learned stuff about the cultural history of bloodsucking immortals, and the soundscape alone should alert even the dullest to the imminent supernatural shenanigans. Anyway, its 100-minute span (that includes interval, it’s pretty bijou) has plenty of good shocks along the way. Even once you’ve worked out that there’s something fishy about Laura Whitmore’s smiling, chilly but ever-helpful Ana, the primary school teacher who is so devoted to Mia’s son Alfie and his gift for drawing characters with knives for teeth. Frankly, even Ana’s red lipstick gives you pause.
Not least becaue Mia herself (Sophie Melville) is unmade-up, tousled, sleepily exhausted with a newborn and a nice normie husband (Bryan Dick) who keeps long hours in some sort of IT surveillance decrypting psychopathic gamer chatrooms with – guess! – vampiric fantasies, after some headless bodies turned up in the Thames. Mia is nervy, forever jiggling her crying bundle, and unnerved by Alfie, who saunters in and out in a horror mask that “Miss” made him. And points a lot. We’ve all known kids like that.
The play’s strength lies in its masterly creation of a particular urban neurosis, familiar to many: a sleepless vulnerable urban mother is on a floating stage swathed in scaffolding: nothing restful in this hard city world . Donnelly captures not only that early-motherhood craziness within the restive urban racket, but also the sheer bloody boring persecution of being a young blonde woman in an age without manners. The aggressive train passenger swearing at her contemptously “just because you’re holding a baby” , the friendly chap in the park asking the time and proceeding to wank at her, the noisy neighbour who doesn’t give a damn, even the doctor she despairingly consults about her scraping anxiety who boredly suggests “breathing techniques, white noise, history podcasts” (good laugh there. There are many, in fact).
Leander Deeny plays all the men, the most magnificent being a wealthy coked-up pickup who takes Mia and Ana to his penthouse for anoother drink: very funny. Ana, by this time Mia’s sweetly supportive friend, sees to him. Oh yes. You’ll love the balcony bit. Also love young Alfie (Callum Knowelden on press night) doing his school presentation, which is of course very eco-gloom contemporary, being all about how humans are ruining the planet and it would do better without them.
There is by this time a lot of blood on the stage, and Donnelly threatens us with a genuinely horrifying end, before twisting it back to – well, you decide. But it’s perhaps comforting to know that even if the planet doesn’t need us humans, vampires really do. For food. How else can they live 600 years and remember the Fire of London?
Director Blance McIntyre keeps it all moving, and gives us the interval to muse on whether Mia is going to enjoy her – er – new status. It doesn’t attempt any deep truths, but offers a good, brief, dark thrill (far more than the boring Let the Right One In) and – I think – most importantly a real questioning kick at the sheer bloody stress of managing a new baby without much support in a stressed, noisy, aggressive city. Feminism noir.
hampsteadtheatre.com to 26 April
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