As absurd and amusing as this story is, what’s equally as crazy is that it is based on true events... well, sort of. Rating
Excellent
The Highgate Vampire is a crazy story. By which I mean the real-life events that inspired Bag Of Beard’s play. Although it’s safe to say the play is equally crazy, albeit in a rather different, intentional way.
Let’s start with real-life events. In 1970 reports of strange sightings started to emerge around Highgate Cemetery. Somehow these escalated into a media frenzy that ultimately resulted in people invading the cemetery, and desecrated graves. Not quite the funny story! It’s well worth taking a read of the abundant online content – I know I did and what a rabbit hole that proved to be.
Writers and performers Alexander Knott and James Demaine take the core of the truth, dig out the macabre and bizarre, and create a play that is certainly funnier than people stuffing garlic in the mouth of dug-up corpses. It’s a play very loosely based on facts, although they do say “more of this is true than we would like.”
The story is told by Sheffield (Knott), a local Priest determined to carry out an exorcism of the evil spirits, and his arch nemesis Farringdon (Demaine), part time psychic. There’s a wonderful battle between them from the off; Sheffield determined to relate events as a serious lecture to his audience, Farringdon wanting to relate them as a performance with “a bit of oomph”. Given that we’re sat in The Cockpit Theatre it will be no surprise to know which is victorious. There’s more than a touch of The Woman In Black with this, as they trade supporting roles, donning costumes that Farrington conveniently has at hand. As much as Sheffield protests the cheapening of the lecture, it doesn’t take much to get him into the spirit of things and don an accent or scarf when required.
When The Highgate Vampire works it is genuinely funny and absurd. The appearance of a ukelele as Farringdon delivers one part of the story in “A Ditty in C Major” is utterly ridiculous and all the better for it. It’s even more flavoursome with the appearance of Audrey the Technician (producer Zoe Grain), sprinting around the gantry to join in the jaunty number.
The real issue is that now and again it seems they are so determined to wrangle every possible laugh and use every little trick possible that it becomes just a bit too laboursome. There are points where you really wish they could just move it all along that bit faster. Thankfully these moments quickly pass, and the pair bring it all back on track, but there is ample opportunity to lose a good ten minutes of what seems unnecessary filler and deliver a much tighter show.
But when it isn’t filling unnecessary gaps, the writing has lots to admire, as it first pits the two antagonists against one another, before making them reluctant partners in the effort to slay the vampire; neither seem at all concerned that the vampire doesn’t necessarily exist, only about who will strike the fatal blow. The closing scenes, as the pair make their final play within Highgate Cemetery are a fantastic conclusion to the show, racking up the tension as well as the humour, as the pair stand back-to-back to face their enemy.
Taking on events as absurd as the Highgate vampire might risk the true events being sillier than the performance, but Knott and Demaine manage to draw out the humour and ridicule in equal measures, bringing to wonderful life a story that will have you shaking your head at the stupidity of both true events and their dramatisation.
Written by Alexander Knott and James Demaine
Directed by Ryan Hutton
Produced by Zoe Grain
Sound design and original music by Samuel Heron
Lighting design by Orion Slater
The Highgate Vampire plays at The Cockpit until Sunday 1 February
