This lesser revived monologue by Conor McPherson begins with male mid-life crisis but heads into a direction that is altogether more unfamiliar and alluring. A man sits before us, telling his story with the intimacy of a confession. He is a Dublin-based theatre critic, played by Nick Danan, jaded and power hungry, though not quite as flatly villainous as Ian McKellen’s drama reviewer in Patrick Marber’s The Critic. He speaks of his drinking, his distance from his family and his search for a story that will elevate him into the ranks of the artists he so envies.
For a while, it seems as if this is little more than an acid-tipped screed against journalists. But McPherson’s monologue warms up when it enters into supernatural territory. The atmosphere is that of a ghost story but with a cast of enigmatic vampires who do not kill humans but feed off them nightly – rather like a theatre critic might be seen to do. The narrator is enlisted to bring back victims for them, and endowed with the charm to reel them in.
Originally staged in 1997 with Brian Cox as its lead, its central vampire, William, who is handsome and human-seeming, foreshadows Stephenie Meyer’s Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson on screen) from the Twilight series.
Directed by Ed Hulme, Danan tells his tale from a bar stool, with a faded red curtain at the back, as if performing a one-man show. He is a crisp, captivating storyteller, bringing intensity and razor tension that leaves you hanging on his words.
It could just as well be an audio drama because nothing happens on stage. It takes a little while to realise that this is storytelling geared to activate its audience’s imaginations and it does not matter that there is so little movement.
McPherson’s script builds its drama artfully but perhaps crams in too many questions around love, art, humanness and the seductive nature of power, leaving too much dangling. And the ending does not quite bring enough of a punch or twist, although Danan keeps us hooked to the very end.
This critic proves himself to be more parasitic than the vampires, in the end, walking away once he has fed off them. It is a damning indictment of critics as parasites – even more monstrous than the vampires, in a sense.
It is a strange and magnetic story for the festive season, excellently performed, that contains stories within stories but also little fat on its bones. It makes you want so much more from it, perhaps because this vampiric world is so seductive, much more so than the narrator himself.
• At Omnibus theatre, London, until 5 January.
