For a time in the late 1960s and early 70s, the area around Highgate cemetery in north London was believed to be terrorised by a vampire. There were sightings, exorcisms, illicit grave excavations and even some desecrations. At the frenzied height of the speculation, the local police force got involved.
In real-life events that sound like the stuff of Hammer horror (indeed, the Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing Hammer horror film Dracula AD 1972 was apparently inspired by the incident), two men, David Farrant and Sean Manchester, got involved in hopes of solving the case. But rather than becoming a Holmes and Watson of the supernatural dimension, they embarked on a bitterly fought contest to be the first to vanquish the vampire, each undermining the other man’s authority along the way.
Here, Patrick Sheffield (Alexander Knott) is a bishop in robes and cassock while Daniel Farringdon (James Demain) is a tobacconist by day and vampire hunter by night. Written by Demain and Knott, this hour-long comedy is shaped as a lecture which both men try to lead, each wrestling the narrative from the other, stopping, starting, disagreeing, and involving even their lecture’s technician, Audrey (played by Zöe Grain, who is also the show’s projection designer and producer). She apparently creates creepy sound effects in key moments of their testimonies (the sound design and musical composition is in fact by Samuel Heron) and enthusiastically shakes her maraca by the side of the stage during a musical number.
Directed by Ryan Hutton, this is surprisingly sweet meta-theatre that zips along like a sketch. The men comically transform into various eye-witnesses and there are some funny lines about Karl Marx, who is famously buried in Highgate cemetery. It is charmingly performed although it could afford to be both sharper and scarier. You feel some goosebumps, such as during the account given by a teenage girl who spots a red-eyed “entity” in the dark that holds her in a vampiric trance – but you wish for more of such moments to contrast the breezy comedy. Still, it is an amusing alternative to a Christmas ghost story, all the more outrageous for its stranger-than-fiction roots. Could it be even creepier as a promenade, site-specific show?
