Everything in this comic Gothic horror is over the top, with flashes of every spooky horror film you have ever seen – vampires, werewolves, spirits of the dead, Egyptian mummies, moving portraits and a cleaver–wielding maniac with bodies piling up in the mill run. This is Hammer Horror meets Royston Vasey as the two actors camp it up for an evening of most enjoyable fun.
Theatrical tropes are piled one on one: the crippled retainer with a line in portentous sayings; the sinister housekeeper, the new bride introduced to the ancestral home with a secret…While the references are to horror films, they are based on older stories from gothic novels and the penny dreadful productions which offered cheap thrills for Victorian audiences. It is not for nothing that the title character’s name is an anagram of vampire.
Thunder and lightning cracks down on a candle-lit Victorian living room. The French windows are flung open. Enter Nicodemus, the Igor-type stable-hand-cum-serf hobbles in on his wooden leg. He is here to talk to Jane, the stiff-laced housekeeper, who is acerbic and superior. She is intentionally reminiscent of Mrs Denver of Manderley Manor in Rebecca (the manor is here called Mandercrest), a dark forbidding place.
Their master, Lord Edgar has brought home his new bride Lady Enid, yet he is still somehow in the power of his dead first wife, Miss Irma. Her portrait hangs eerily over the fire-place, an ever-glowing candle in her memory as he had promised. But horror lurks in every corner, just waiting to pounce….
Chilling declarations are splattered throughout the scenes like blood which prod the audience into expectations of terror; ‘the dead cling to us and don’t want to let go’, declares Lord Edgar; ‘Miss Irma liked her meat bloody’, the housekeeper remarks ominously.
Joe Newton plays Lord Edgar brilliantly with poker faced pomposity, switching to a statuesque Jane, pert and prim. James Keningale is superlative as both the vulgar and flirtatious Lady Enid and as Nicodemus. They both do a marvellous job of keeping in character with their rapid cross-over and quick changes nothing short of genius. Their timing was spot on. The cross-dressing is played up for the most self-knowing laughs, as Enid says at one point, ‘Any man who dresses up as a woman can’t be all bad.’
Both stimulate loud guffaws and shrieks of horror from the audience. The action pounds away at our heart-beats, romping through the events involving howling wolves, locked cells, silver bullets and bleeding pictures topped off with unexpected magic tricks.
The play dates form 1984 and can be considered a camp classic; it deserves the outstanding performance given by the Jack Studio Theatre.
Playwright: Charles Ludlam
Director: Kate Bannister
Cast: Joe Newton, James Keningale
Until: 4th January 2026
Running Time: 2 hours including 15 mins interval