Untitled Vampire Play by Kevin Douglas plays at Lookingglass

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“A Bloody Good Time to sink your Teeth into at Lookingglass!” - Review By: Paul Lisnek

***1/2 / 4

“A Bloody Good Time to sink your Teeth into at Lookingglass!”

Lookingglass Theatre is well known for producing daring theater “without a net” as they say, and they’ve done it again with an unexpectedly funny play which offers a wink at vampire mythology and enough theatrical mischief to remind you that the company still knows how to craft spectacle with bite out of thin air and sometimes out of fake blood! Is there such thing as a “feel good” vampire tale? You may have just found it at Lookingglass.

The title of Kevin Douglas’s ironically called “Untitled Vampire Play” appears to be a bit coy mixed with parody, but the production itself lunges headfirst into gothic absurdity and gleefully indulges in sinking its teeth into vampire lore.

Douglas’s script is a clever balancing act between satire and sincerity. He understands that vampires, as a longtime staple in works of horror are both overexposed yet deeply seductive. But rather than reinventing the creature, he toys with our expectations — leaning into melodrama one moment, puncturing it in the next with a well-timed joke creating a rom-com feel. The result is a script that feels like it’s improvising on mythology, but always with a sharp awareness of audience’s love for the genre. Douglas is clearly having too much fun in telling his story, and much of that joy proves infectious.

Director Devon DeMayo and the Lookingglass ensemble lean into the company’s signature physicality, turning the stage into a literal park or playground of shadowy corners, coffins arising from nowhere and shocking surprises. If I’m going to be critical, I wish they could light or otherwise find a way to not let the audience see an open trap door letting us know someone is about to disappear into it. That said, the design elements—moody lighting, cleverly deployed stagecraft and props, boosted with just enough camp—create a seemingly familiar world that is both eerie and knowingly artificial, such as watching the vampires literally feast on the intestines of a victim. It’s kind of a haunted house where the ghosts will likely stop to crack a joke before disappearing through a trapdoor.

Jordan Arredondo (“In the Heights” and “Little Shop of Horrors”) delivers a performance that anchors the production with a sort of naive charisma. There is an ease and youthful energy to his presence that permits the outlandish elements to orbit around him without unnerving him at all. He navigates the play’s tonal shifts well playing the humor but handling the quieter, more human moments endearingly.

Courtney Rikki Green, meanwhile, proves to be a compelling force onstage a pre-requisite for a vampire! She can perform the maturity of a vampire who understands and relishes her eternal fate with an ability to play off the others’ humor with straight person emphasis. Green has an impeccable sense of timing—she knows exactly when to let a line breathe and when to drive it home—and her command of the character’s relationships with all the other players makes her a consistent focal point, whether in the play’s dramatic, light comedic and most chaotic sequences.

The supporting ensemble deserves equal credit for sustaining the production’s energy. It’s a true ensemble piece in the Lookingglass tradition, where no one is merely decorative and everyone seems in on the joke but does their part.

If there’s a critique to be made, it’s that Untitled Vampire Play occasionally feels like it’s circling its own cleverness. The humor, while frequently sharp, can become a bit self-satisfied, and the narrative spine loosens as the play leans further into its comedic instincts. But even when it meanders, it remains entertaining—less a tightly plotted story than a theatrical experience that invites you to revel in its eccentricities.

Ultimately, this is a production that understands its audience or at least the audience that is drawn to horror and the willingness or desire to make fun of it. Untitled Vampire is savvy, theater-literate, and more than willing to laugh at a genre that only infrequently pokes fun at itself (anyone remember the film “Love at First Bite?”) has taken itself far too seriously for far too long. Lookingglass doesn’t just invite you into their dark, vampire world, acknowledging that you may or may not believe in the existence of such creatures, But as only Lookingglass can, they essentially hand you a stake, throw some blood at you, and dare you not to enjoy yourself. 

Untitled Vampire Play runs thru July 12th; tickets at: www.Lookingglasstheatre.org