Let the Right One In by Jack Thorne (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Let the Right One Inby Jack Thorne
• Judith Saunders (bio)

Let the Right One In, by Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany Berkeley Repertory Theatre (05 20– 06 25, 2023)

The West Coast premiere of Let The Right One Inopened May 20, 2023 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. This production was headed by the original British creative team with American actors. The story is based on the Swedish vampire novel Lat den Ratte Komma inby John Ajvide Lindqvist, which was subsequently adapted for a movie, popular with Generation Z. Stage director John Tiffany, choreographer Steven Hoggett and playwright Jack Thorne collaborated to theatrically capture both the magic and horror of a love story between a troubled adolescent boy, Oskar, and an ageless vampire in the guise of an androgynous pre-pubescent, Eli. Each finds solace in the other and they finally venture together into an unknown future. According to the program notes, it was the Swedish movie that inspired Tiffany to launch this stage production for Scotland's National Theatre, which then transferred to London's West End. Such story-filching from other sources is not an unusual theatre practice. Playwrights have traditionally been magpies in their search for material. It was this production team that based their highly successful Harry Potter and the Cursed Childon the book by J. K. Rowling.

I attended the performance on Saturday, May 27, not having read the book or seen the movie, and with only a smattering of vampiric knowledge from reading Bram Stoker's Dracula. I pondered our society's fascination with this non-human, blood-sucking creature that has so persistently been reprised in the media. What relevance does this myth have for us today? Having seen Tiffany and Hoggett's stunning 2007 production of Black Watchat St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, I was eager to see what they would do with Let the Right One In. I was not disappointed. They succeeded once more in creating a memorable experience, exemplifying the genre "physical theatre"—employing mime, dance and all the tools theatre has at its disposal to tell a story.

As the play began, the open stage revealed Christine Jones's minimalist set of snow-covered birch trees lit by an icy cool light casting an eerie atmosphere. Lone figures silently crossed and re-crossed the stage to the haunting music of Ólafur Arnalds "Now I am Winter." Finally, a passerby asks an old man if he is in need of anything. "The time," says the old man, before grabbing him, rendering him unconscious, awkwardly hoisting him up by his feet with a rope strung over a tree branch, and slashing his throat to drain his blood. Hearing voices approach, the old man panics, and runs off leaving behind the jug of blood at the feet of the hanging man. Suddenly we are in the world of the vampire.

The story unfolded in episodic fashion, with actors as stage-hands moving furniture and props on and off stage as scenes changed. Among them were a set of gym lockers where Oskar is routinely bullied by classmates, a playground jungle gym where Oskar and Eli meet and become friends, a kitchen table and [End Page 272]bed to represent Oskar's home life, and an impressive water tank to serve as the swimming pool for the climactic scene where Oskar, threatened with drowning by tormenting classmates, is saved by his avenging angel, Eli. Such abstract scenery, swiftly changed, maintained the play's fluid action and served to stage the un-stageable elements of this supernatural story.

The acting was of a high standard throughout, but it was Diego Lucano as Oskar who was exceptional as a scrawny adolescent exhibiting the vulnerability and gaucheness that made him the target of classmate bullies. Recalling the tortured schoolboy in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Oskar is their "Piggy" providing them a daily opportunity to toy with, humiliate and torture. Awkward scenes with Oskar's alcoholic mother, his absent father, and even his sympathetic gym teacher, who is never present to rescue him from his daily bullying, demonstrate his need for stability and safety. Noah Lamanna...