SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 3, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — Halloween may be over, but if you still want to get goosebumps and feel shivers running down your spine, you might want to head over to the Rose Wagner’s Studio Theatre for the world premiere of “My Brother Was a Vampire” from the local gem of a playwright, Morag Shepherd.
The play tells the story of siblings Skye and Callum, who love each other, hate each other, and need each other. Oh, and they can fly. The play is a horror comedy that follows a bizarre, broken, and blisteringly brazen journey in reverse.
Shepherd says of the piece: “I describe ‘My Brother Was a Vampire’ as a horror comedy because I really wanted to try my hand at writing something scary and suspenseful. I wanted to write something that evoked the presence of someone, or something, lurking just out of sight, to represent a paranoia, or an unknown…. I liked the idea of having the audience balance right on the edge of laughter and discomfort and constantly tried to play with the line between comedy and horror.”
Shepherd, who grew up in Scotland and England, then attended Brigham Young University, is not a didactic playwright that holds your hand and tells you what to feel and when. She wrote her master’s thesis on absurdist playwright Edward Albee. This play, like some of her others, is influenced by the Theater of the Absurd tradition, a post–World War II designation for plays written by a number of mostly European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theater which has evolved from their work. Think Albee, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and plays such as “Waiting for Godot” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
This piece in particular is rather like a choose your own adventure or a hall of mirrors in that it really depends on each individual audience member to decide for themselves what the dominant themes are. If there is a monster lurking in the shadows, is it Callum and Skye’s father? Is it a manifestation of mental illness? Is it the medical issues Skye is facing or the addiction that Callum is dealing with? Is it death? Or could it be that there is no monster at all and the action is just in Callum and Skye’s collective imagination?
The same nebulousness applies to the title of the show. (Shepherd’s titles are always clever and you have to pay attention to grammar and wording: take her 2015 GSL Fringe Festival hit “Poppy’s in the Sand.”) I had to think hard about the title “My Brother WAS a Vampire.” If Callum was previously a vampire, but the siblings can still fly, and there are moments when he is manipulated and controlled by something other (the most striking visual moments in the show for me), then have his powers passed on to someone else, and if so, who?
The show is directed by Cheryl Ann Cluff and features Sydney Shoell as Skye and Benjamin Young as Callum. The script, which is a lean and mean 60 minutes, is also an interesting challenge for the actor, in that it is about a brother/sister relationship, but there is not realistic plot progression, so the actors and the director must decide how to thread together the words so they are rooted in truth for the actors but there is room left for moments that are basically existential and and cannot be pinned down. Cluff, Shoell and Young achieve this incredibly successfully and with great dexterity. There is a heartbreaking charm to their relationship; they know each other well enough that they can be absolutely brutal to each other, but there is also a palpable tenderness between them. Because we become so invested in their relationship, we are also absorbed by the more supernatural elements of the show.
The production values are simple and strong. The set by Janice Chan has large plastic drapes hanging upstage and there are echoes of Brechtian theater with the visible loading door at the back of the space behind the drapes as well as costumes on a hanger (Callum and Skye change outfits on stage). There are also various set pieces that transform into a hospital bed, the door to a bedroom, items that allow the characters to fly, and others.
The lighting by Emma Belnap and sound by Cluff really enhance the fear factor of the show. Cluff is a master at spooky sound, having sound designed Plan-B’s annual radio shows, which began in 2005, most of which take place at Halloween. The sound in this play really is a standout; one sound effect, for example, is the sound of actual corn crying; it’s spine chilling. It also feels as if the sound is coming from behind the audience, which is hair-raising in itself. The costumes by Victoria Bird have nice attention to detail; Callum, for example, wears a sleeveless denim jacket with patches all over that may give clues to some of the plot points; while Skye at one point wears a rather beautiful handmade wedding dress.
There’s a feeling I get with Shepherd’s plays that is rare for me when I attend the theater. Not to sound snotty, but I’ve attended a lot of plays over the years, and it takes quite a lot for me to respond deeply. I often feel like emotions skim over me rather than take root. Something that has happened to me in the past with this playwright’s work and was the case again last night that at times in the action, especially towards the end, I felt an all-encompassing, paralysing sense of SOMETHING, almost like being frozen for a few seconds. It might have been anxiety, it might have been foreboding, it might have just been plain fear. It’s not super comfortable and it’s a bit overwhelming, but it is also refreshing to feel that much, and the odd thing about it is I leave the theater each time from Shepherd’s plays feeling renewed, and oddly lighter.
“My Brother Was a Vampire” plays through Nov. 13 in the Studio Theatre in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center at 138 W. 300 South, Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets and more information are available here. Currently the only tickets available are for Thursday, Nov. 10.
