06/06/2026
Saw this last night, was very good.
| NEW REVIEW |
‘Let the Right One In’
A stage adaptation by Jack Thorne
Director - Dan Bain
Produced by The Court Theatre
Performed in the Stewart Family Theatre
Until 20 June
Running time: 2hrs 20mins (inc. interval)
Photo by Charlie Rose
Reviewed by Kineta Knight for Backstage Christchurch - Theatre Reviews
Have you ever sat through a content advisory at the start of a show that receives laughter and applause?
“Contains violence, realistic blood effects, confronting depictions of murder, gore, supernatural themes, death, bullying, nudity, coarse language and strobe lighting. Ages 16+ only.”
Going into the show with zero knowledge of the plot, apart from the marketing hero image (just the way I like it!), I was a little taken aback. Was this nervous laughter from the audience? Did they know something I didn’t? Did this mean we were in for a good night?
Well, there is a little to unpack.
My plus-one informed me she had seen the film, and she had a knowing grin on her face, as though she knew far more than me.
Fair.
There is something deeply unsettling about watching childhood loneliness turn feral.
Not the kind of loneliness that announces itself with theatrical sobbing or grand speeches. The far more dangerous kind. The cold, watchful, after-school kind. The kind that sits in bedrooms, sandpits, stairwells and snow-covered playgrounds, waiting for someone, anyone, to notice.
The Court Theatre has delivered a production that understands exactly where true horror lives. Not in the blood, although there is plenty of that. Not in the supernatural, although the shadows here have teeth. But in the terrible ache of being young, unwanted, misunderstood, and so desperate for connection that danger can start to look like salvation.
Adapted for the stage by Jack Thorne from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s cult Swedish novel and film, this is no cosy vampire story dressed up in gothic romance. It is far stranger and sadder than that. It is part thriller, part coming-of-age story, part brutal fairytale, and part warning: be careful who you let in, yes, but be even more careful who you leave out.
Other than this being quite possibly the most unusual piece I’ve ever seen in my 30 years of attending shows at The Court, there are four things that make this production something quite special: the set, the sound, the music, and the leading man, Bruno Hart.
Chris Reddington’s set is spectacular. How he has created something so grand on a relatively intimate stage is remarkable. So many excellent details make up this world, and if the content advisory above has not put you off, go for the set alone.
Which brings me to another reason to see this production: the sound.
Andrew Todd. Wow.
This is an absolute masterclass in sound skill and technique. The atmosphere he creates is akin to being in a movie theatre. Todd’s AV work is also beautifully handled. The sound, together with Giles Tanner’s clever lighting design, which is crucial to the production, is all played out faultlessly by operator Geoff Nunn.
At the centre of the production is Oskar, played by Hart, a bullied teenager whose vulnerability is never overplayed. Hart gives him a brittle, almost translucent quality; you feel the humiliation before he speaks it. His Oskar is awkward, funny in flashes, wounded in ways he does not yet have the language for, and dangerously open to the first person who truly sees him.
That person is Eli, played with eerie control and quiet magnetism by Sarah Clare Judd.
Judd’s Eli is still, strange, unreadable and magnetic. She resists every obvious vampire trick. There is no theatrical hissing, no gothic posing, no cartoon menace. Instead, Judd gives us something much more disturbing. Eli is ancient and childlike, tender and predatory, innocent and appalling. She does not so much enter scenes as alter the temperature of them.
Oskar and Eli’s scenes have the awkward charge of first love, but also the moral queasiness of watching two damaged beings build a shelter out of violence.
This production does not ask us simply to fear Eli. It asks us to sit with the far more complicated question of why Oskar needs her.
The bullies, played by Bradley Mutch and Josiah Morgan, are horrible because they are ordinary. There is no grand villainy. No moustache-twirling. Just the casual sa**sm of children who have learned how power feels and want more of it. Their cruelty has the nauseating rhythm of something rehearsed. The kind of violence adults dismiss as “kids being kids” until someone ends up ruined.
And this production understands that bullying is not character-building. It is excavation. It digs into a child and makes room for something else.
Because monsters do not always enter through hatred.
Sometimes they enter through the gaps love leaves behind.
‘Let the Right One In’ is not an easy night at the theatre. It is not designed to be. It is disturbing, sad, bloody and strangely romantic. By the end, you may find yourself less frightened of the monster than of the world that made room for one.
And perhaps that is the most chilling thing of all.
This is a vampire story, yes.
But the bite is human.
