FRIGHT NIGHT

Stage Adaptation by James Michael Shoberg; Original Screenplay by Tom Holland

19M 8F

SETS

TV Studio Set. Three distinct bedrooms. Exterior and interior of a night club. A high school cafeteria. Interior of a dilapidated house. A backyard. A kitchen. A dungeon. A sidewalk. A living room. Yard and fencing between two homes.

SYNOPSIS

Fright Night is a straight adaptation of the 1985 cult horror film.

Charley and his girlfriend Amy are watching the old horror show Fright Night Theatre while Charley pressures her into sex. He notices his new neighbour hauling a coffin into his home and raises suspicions that he might be a vampire. He takes this theory to his friend, the goth loner “Evil” Ed, who mocks him. Two missing prostitutes later, Charley has the police to investigate his neighbour, the charming Jerry and his handsome live-in ‘carpenter’ Billy. After a brief investigation into Jerry’s creepy renovated home the cop dismisses Charley’s claims. Later Jerry, in full Vampiric fashion threatens Charley to leave him to his dark business. Charley instead makes his home vampire proof and seeks out the help of the Fright Night host, ageing Hammer Horror actor Peter Vincent, who rebuffs him. Amy and “Evil” Ed contact Peter Vincent independently, out of concern of the declining mental state of their friend. The foursome investigate Jerry and Billy again and leave with Amy and Ed bewitched by Jerry while Peter and Charley ready themselves to slay the vampire next door. Ed is bitten by Jerry and becomes his vampiric servant. They chase down Charley and Amy into a nightclub where Amy is bitten by Jerry.

Act Two rapidly concludes with Peter and Charley laying siege to Jerry’s home. They ward off his bitten victims and crack open the windows setting Jerry ablaze and releasing his thralls from his spell. Months later, Amy and Charley are watching an episode of Fright Night while having sex. In the dark, the vampiric Ed watches them.

NOTES

This show would be inappropriate for any Walnut audience. Its niche subject would alienate our subscriber base and its loyalty to the source material is actually a hindrance. Even to its target audience, the show's joyless recitation of the film’s major moments would disappoint genre fans.

Fright Night is nearly unstageable. In its dedication to recreating the film it fails to consider practical stagecraft. Example: early on in Act I, the revelation of Jerry’s vampirisim is based on his bite marks into an apple. In a venue larger than thirty seats this becomes impossible to reveal to an audience. There are eighteen distinct sets in Act I alone. The pacing of the film, though faithfully recreated here, is unmanageable when staged. Act I is bloated at eighty-six pages (with fifteen sets) while Act II is a quarter of the length. The show has a dearth of jokes, gore, and camp which are the main attractions of its genre. While it was written and staged this year, the sexual politics remain in the Ronald and Nancy 1980s, starting as distasteful in the first scene and concludes on genuinely upsetting. It renders the gushy, teen fun of the My-Neighbor-is-a-Vampire plot into something bordering on joylessness.

There is a dramatic connection between B-Horror films and black box theatrics (cheap effects, melodramatic plot, slapstick humour, gore, etc.) however Fright Night does nothing to highlight the relationship between the two mediums. It leans neither towards the schlocky horror and gore of the original film or the tongue-straight-through-cheek humour of staging the 80s. What’s frustrating about Fright Night is its potential to be a fantastic demonstration of the goofy qualities that made the original such a cult classic. Yet because nothing is added in translation, there is little reason for it to exist. While other campy stage adaptations of cult classics (Evil Dead: The Musical, Heathers, etc.) reworked the identities of the originals without sacrificing the B-movie appeal, Fright Night loses the best parts for no clear reason other than a purist sensibility.