one4review | On 24, Aug 2025

Baron Vordenburg is the world’s leading expert in one very specific thing – hunting and killing monsters. More specifically, vampires. And in the special seminar version of his Guide to the Paranormal, he promises to tell you how.

A play from Dark Pony Productions, the appropriately eerie show features the Baron being assisted by his two muzzled helpers (or minions?) Gothic and Grotesque as he goes into the details of his chosen vocation, the history of vampires, their biology, their feeding habits and, of course, how to deal with them. And as the Baron continues with his lecture getting all the more unhinged it becomes clearer and clearer that perhaps the real monster isn’t the one with the fangs…

The show has a difficult balancing act to pull off, with the inherently macabre nature of its subject matter needing to mix with humour, the majority being provided by the clowning of the Baron’s mischievous assistants. This is made even harder with the addition of the lecture being a bit more on the serious and technical side, when it’s not exploring the more gruesome aspects of monster extermination. Unfortunately, it’s a balance that the show doesn’t manage to maintain throughout, though not due to any lack of effort on behalf of the cast. Rather than trying to match slapstick humour and gothic horror, there’s an argument to be made that focussing just on the sinister side (or vice versa) would have made the show a little cleaner. The show suffers also from a touch of overwriting – a couple of extra characters not needed, a little too heavy on the lecturing and less on the storytelling and so on.

Overall though, it is still an enjoyable show, and one with a clear message about what monsters are and what we merely perceive monsters to be. With a little reworking, there’s the building blocks of something bloodcurdling here.

***
Tom M
Annexe at theSpace @ Symposium Hall
Until 23rd August