Count Dykula – Soho Theatre, London

Writers: Eleanor Colville, Rosanna Suppa and Robbie Taylor Hunt

Director: Robbie Taylor Hunt

It can’t be easy being a lesbian vampire. Not only are their usual prey – kids who get lost in the woods at night – less susceptible to jump scares, but everybody’s perception has been forever scarred by the 2009 James Corden/Mathew Horne vehicle, Lesbian Vampire Killers.

And so Count Dykula finds herself returning to education, enrolling at Scare University in order to improve her vampiric lifestyle. However, she finds that the principal, the buxom vampire Scarlet Fang, is enforcing the sort of normative behaviour in the monster community that threatens the butch lesbian’s identity, and that of every non-conforming supernatural entity in the place.

But while Airlock Theatre’s latest madcap comedy, a followup to 2024’s Pansexual Pregnant Piracy, occasionally dips its fangs into socio-political satire, its main concentration is on sending up both horror and high school genres. Writers and performers Eleanor Colville, Rosanna Suppa and Robbie Taylor Hunt keep the gags coming thick and fast.

Suppa’s Dykula often finds herself in the role that we increasingly inappropriately describe as the “straight man”, with Colville and Hunt’s quick change characters – from cheerleaders to zombies – dominating the silliness. All three (backed up by musician, and occasional scene-stealer, Meg Narongchai) create a silly, smutty world.

It’s also a musical, although the cast’s enthusiasm for singing far exceeds their technical ability, and the overall story lacks the sort of precision that one feels may have emerged from a few more drafts. But this show cares little for slickness, instead preferring to focus on giving its audience a rollicking good time.

With its slapstick, pantomime approach to its source material, Count Dykula delivers an entertaining evening. It may not have the bite its satirical premise promises, but there’s still plenty to sink one’s teeth into.

Continues until 1 March 2025