Theatre in Review: Let the Right One In (National Theatre of Scotland/St. Ann's Warehouse)

	Rebecca Benson and Cristian Ortega. Photo: Pavel Antonov

It's been a long time since the theatre has produced as fragrant and seductive a flower of evil as Let the Right One In, a romance of adolescence and the undead that fascinates, disturbs, and at least once will have you leaping out of your seat in terror. It also offers further proof, if any were needed, that the director John Tiffany has a unique gift for taking well-known material (Once, The Glass Menagerie) and reimagining it so vividly that you can barely believe you have encountered it before.

In this case, Jack Thorne's play is based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which was made into a gripping Swedish film in 2008, with a screenplay by Lindqvist, and, in 2010, in an English-language version called Let Me In. The 12-year-old protagonist, Oskar, lives with his divorced (also bitter, needy, and hard-drinking) mother in an apartment complex. Oskar is the sort of good-natured but awkward boy who makes for natural bully bait; in the first of several harrowing sequences, his tormenters pound on the gym locker where he is hiding from them. Calling him "Piggy," they demand he squeal in abasement; later they force him to eat sand.

There are other malign forces at loose in the neighborhood. An elderly man stops an adolescent boy, ostensibly to ask for the time of day, gasses him into an unconscious state, trusses him up, cuts his throat, and collects the blood in a plastic jug. Meanwhile, Oskar begins meeting nightly with Eli, a young girl who appears out of nowhere, clad in only jeans and a top, oblivious to the winter weather. (When asked by Oskar if she isn't cold, she replies, enigmatically, "I guess I've forgotten how to be."). Even as they tentatively form a friendship, Oskar's mother complains about the next-door neighbors, who live in seclusion, their windows permanently covered over, but who can be heard screaming at each other at night. And the bodies continue to pile up, baffling the local police.

Let the Right One In is sufficiently well-known that it is telling no secrets to reveal that Eli is a member of the vampire community, if a reluctant one. "I'm nothing. Not a boy, not a girl. Nothing," she says to Oskar, adding, "I live off of blood, but I'm not that." Nevertheless, she sleeps all day in a trunk, cannot tolerate sunlight, and when deprived of her only food source, begins to smell like a cross between a wet dog and a festering bandage. Also, her relationship with Hakan, who lives with her and supplies her with blood, is not what it seems at first.

In all its versions, Let the Right One In -- the title refers to the rule that Eli must be invited into a room before she may enter -- tracks Oskar as he withdraws from the hostile everyday world into a private communion with Eli. But, as opposed to the film, which had a bleak, almost purposely ugly quality, Tiffany's production is a dark, elegiac romance, albeit one marked by stunning moments of brutality. One memorable number follows another: Oskar, acting out his rage, takes part in a stylized knife fight against a tree; he is joined by several other boys in a hauntingly staged fantasy of getting even. (The movement sequences are staged by Steven Hoggett and are set to Olafur Arnalds' melancholy, yet propulsive, score.) Oskar's hard-drinking mother crawls into bed with him, gradually taking the blanket for herself -- thus telling you, in a single gesture -- all you need to know about their relationship. An awkward encounter between Oskar and his absentee father climaxes in a revelation that explains a great deal about the family's shattered state.

There's also a chilling moment when Oskar and Eli embrace while Hakan, seething with jealousy, looks on, unseen by them. Oskar, keeping watch for Eli, falls asleep next to the trunk where she spends the day, throwing a protective arm around the box. This idyll is interrupted by the police, in one of the most frightening sequences I have experienced in decades of theatregoing. And for sheer suspense, the climax, in which Oskar's tormentors offer him a choice of drowning or facial mutilation, can't be beat.

Tiffany has also solved the problem of staging a script that is structured like a screenplay, moving rapidly from one location to another; the action unfolds on Christine Jones' set depicting a wooded area in the winter with only a large HVAC unit on stage. (It services the apartment house where Oskar lives.) Each location is depicted with one or two pieces of furniture; at the outset, the director establishes the convention that all the characters use the woods as a shortcut, allowing changeovers to happen rapidly and efficiently as they pass through.

Throughout, Jeremy Chernick's special effects produce the kind of magic one rarely sees in the theatre. These include Hakan's killings, the appearance of a face scarred by sulfuric acid, and a simply astonishing moment when blood issues spontaneously from Eli's head. The aforementioned climax is a triumph of cunning staging. The HVAC unit spins to reveal a glass tank, which fills with water. And when Eli sets upon the neck of a victim, you will swear you are watching someone drink the blood of another.

Tiffany gets exemplary work from the cast, especially Cristian Ortega, whose Oskar gradually discovers his own strength, and Rebecca Benson's enigmatic, tragic Eli, who by degrees learns to accept Oskar's affection. Their growing relationship provides Let the Right One In with its dark heart. There is also fine work from Cliff Burnett as Hakan, worn to the breaking point out of worry for Eli; Graeme Dalling and Andrew Fraser as Oskar's nemeses; Gavin Kean as a sympathetic gym teacher; and Susan Vidler as Oskar's mother.

Jones' atmospheric set is illuminated with ice-cold blue washes and unexpected bits of warmth by Chahine Yavroyan. (Jones also did the costumes, which neatly evoke the play's 1980s time period.) Gareth Fry's sound design provides excellent reinforcement for the music and also supplies some exceptionally creepy abstract effects.

Tiffany achieves one of his finest coups in the wordless final tableau, in which Oskar and Eli manage escape -- although to where remains an open question. In a way, their romance is brought to fruition. It's both a triumph -- at last, Oskar experiences authentic love -- and a kind of disaster, for in Hakan's fate (not to be described here) we surely see Oskar's future. Our culture has been flooded with vampire stories in the last decade, but few, if any of them, can approach the power of Let the Right One In, which gives the words "undying love" a frisson they have rarely, if ever, possessed before.--David Barbour