Q

Kindly sponsored by my dear friend Xin, we watched the last and matinee show of VAMPYR at the Drama Centre Theatre.

Beginning with a lot of ha-ha-has and hoo-hoos, jangly bones, halloween-esque faces pulled, our vampiric duo made their entrance. It was a long entrance. For the first what felt like minutes, I was tickled and mildly impressed by their physicality, quality of voice.

After awhile I felt bad that this sequence was not garnering the laughter it obviously was soliciting. Was I amused? Yes! Was I guilty enough to fake laugh a little? I did.

VAMPYR was entertaining enough.

Some sequences, imageries, and moments held their own. And of these, a few were held too long, and broke the spell.

While I enjoy a good multi-use metaphor, the somewhat ham-fisted and shallow usage of its titular vampire left me wondering. While I get that the night shift workers’ nocturnal and poor working environment made them as good as the undead, the blood-sucking ways of corporations made them vampires, and literal vampiric bats were impacted by the greenwashing… what was the ultimate intention of the running metaphor?

What was similar about them, or are we highlighting a contrast? In any case, despite the continuous delight in hammering in this metaphor, it seemed to have no further meaning besides being a nifty gimmick.

Things I would have liked to see:

More showing, less telling (most of the revelations came through exposition, which was a waste). More leveraging of the actors extraordinary talent, with their bodies, their voices, and chemistry.

More precision and conciseness. They could have shaved a good 20 min off and made it extra good.

More consistency. The nature of these vampiric beings switch in and out. I do not mean between the three vampiric metaphors, but even within each, there was too great a variation in movement, speech, even costume, for me to grasp a ready line that weaves the bigger picture together.

A sequence of things happening, and a story, somewhat. I’m glad to have watched it anyway, if not purely for a good time and entertainment. It could, and had very real potential to, have had more depth to it.

Also, for a play about greenwashing, they sure use a lot of plastic! (Joke. I’m sure they recycle. But it was a lot.)