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The First Vampire

 
Nicholas Abrams Review by Nicholas Abrams 3 Published: 4 Jul 2026 50 Tank House Ln Show Dates: 4 Jul 2026-11 Jul 2026

The origin story of vampires feels like fertile ground for theatre. Throw in Lord Byron, John Polidori, Mary Shelley, a thunderstorm on Lake Geneva and a literary dispute that has rumbled on for two centuries, and you’ve got all the ingredients for an engaging historical drama. The First Vampire certainly has a fascinating story to tell. I’m just not convinced it needs to be quite so funny.

An absorbing tale of friendship, rivalry and vampires

Ryan Gladstone’s two-hander intertwines two narratives: the creation of The Vampyre, widely regarded as the first vampire story in English literature, and the increasingly strained friendship between Polidori and his employer, Lord Byron. The production moves between literary history and personal conflict, with each storyline informing the other without becoming confusing. Structurally, it’s neatly done.

Madeleine Humeny and Rebecca Wass share the stage throughout, developing a believable relationship that shifts from admiration to resentment as Byron’s ego increasingly overshadows Polidori’s ambitions. It’s in these quieter, more emotional moments that the production is at its strongest. The friendship feels genuine, which makes its eventual collapse all the more affecting.

Where the production struggles is its tone. As a comedy-drama, it certainly contains plenty of jokes and comic exchanges, but many of them don’t quite land. That’s partly because the underlying story is such a melancholy one. It’s difficult to sustain broad comedy when the destination is Byron’s lonely death in Greece and Polidori’s tragic suicide. The emotional scenes carry considerably more weight than the comic ones, and I couldn’t help wondering whether Gladstone’s script would have been stronger had it embraced being a straight historical drama.

Technically, there’s much to admire. The lighting creates an appropriately Gothic atmosphere, with flashes of lightning and carefully judged underscoring adding tension without becoming overbearing. The staging is less successful. Three large, sheet-covered structures dominate the stage for much of the evening, creating the expectation that they’re hiding some dramatic reveal. Instead, they’re eventually used for shadow puppetry depicting Frankenstein. While an inventive idea, the execution never quite achieves the impact it seems to be aiming for.

There are also a handful of moments that feel oddly unexplained, particularly Byron’s repeated cries of names such as “Shelley” or “Sister”, which seem loaded with significance but never become entirely clear - at least to me.

The story of Byron and Polidori deserves to be better known, and The First Vampire does an admirable job of introducing audiences to one of literature’s more curious partnerships. It’s well performed, thoughtfully staged in places, and built around genuinely compelling source material. I simply found myself most engaged whenever it stopped trying to make me laugh and trusted the drama already sitting at its heart.

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The Blurb:

The incredible TRUE STORY of how the first Vampire in literature was created. Vampires! Poetry! Blood! Shadows! Betrayal! Monsters! And, of course, the Ghost of Lord Byron! From the twisted mind of Ryan Gladstone comes the newest Monster Theatre creation.