Latest news with #LettheRightOneIn
Korea Herald
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Interview: Vampire classic ‘Let the Right One In' casts haunting, melancholic magic on stage
Some stories never grow old. Neither does Eli, the eternally young vampire at the heart of "Let the Right One In," the 2004 Swedish novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist that has spawned numerous adaptations -- film, television and stage. This July, the haunting tale returns to Seoul as a chilling, yet tender coming-of-age love story, just in time for the summer heat. Running from July 3 to Aug. 16 at the National Theater of Korea's Haeoreum Theater, the Korean-language stage production makes its long-awaited return nine years after its 2016 local premiere. 'Luckily, the production seems to be timeless like Eli,' said John Tiffany, the Tony and Olivier Award-winning director behind "Once" and "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." Speaking to the press via video call following an open rehearsal on Tuesday, Tiffany reflected on the enduring life of the piece, which first opened with the National Theatre of Scotland before traveling to London, New York and beyond. 'But it's changed with every new audience and every new actor that's come to work with us,' he said. The story follows Oskar, a lonely, bullied teenage boy who lives with his mother on the outskirts of town. When a string of grisly murders begins to plague the neighborhood, Oskar meets Eli -- the strange girl who moves in next door. What unfolds is a dark, poignant bond between two outsiders: one human, the other something else entirely. Tiffany described "Let the Right One In" as a retelling of the Peter Pan story, which has always fascinated him. 'It's got these melancholy and quiet stories about death and living forever," he said. "And in James Barrie's 'Peter Pan,' you realize that the only way truly to live forever like Peter is to be dead. The dead are immortal. And that's certainly true for Eli, obviously. And you get the sense as the story goes on that Eli is like Peter and Hakan is like Wendy and Oskar is Jane, Wendy's daughter." Tiffany found the dynamics compelling -- not only the vampire mythology, but also its connection to fairy tales and the supernatural. 'These stories reflect aspects of our lives, even though our lives aren't fairy tales or supernatural — though they may feel that way at times,' he said. 'And yet, what 'Let the Right One In' and 'Peter Pan' both tell us is that it's desperately lonely and sad to stay alive and immortal." The director, who has helmed several adaptations from screen and book to stage, including "Once" and "Wild Rose," described the process as one of discovering a story's DNA and rebuilding it using the cells of theater. 'I enjoy seeing how something that's purely cinematic can become purely theater. And theater, to me, is really a genre for horror. I quite like the idea of terrifying people in a live experience." Set to the hauntingly beautiful score by Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds, which flows like an emotional undercurrent throughout the 140-minute performance, the production also draws its emotional power from dance-like movement sequences created by Tiffany's longtime collaborator, movement director Steven Hoggett. "Oskar finds it hard to describe what he's feeling. He finds it hard to connect and to be understood emotionally," Tiffany explained. "In theater, movement is an incredibly powerful way to explore the desire to communicate, or how to articulate emotion in an emotional story." Tiffany noted how naturally the story fits into the Korean cultural landscape, citing the country's rich tradition of horror storytelling. 'There's a strong tradition of horror in Korean cinema -- films like 'Thirst,' 'The Host' and 'Train to Busan,'" he said. "So it felt like it was coming home in lots of ways."
Irish Times
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Movie Quiz: How many times have Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese worked together?
Which doesn't belong? Tommy... About a... Gone... Beautiful... Who plays Ringo Starr in Sam Mendes' upcoming Beatles tetralogy? Harris Dickinson Paul Mescal Joseph Quinn Barry Keoghan Which doesn't end at the same terminus? Heat Brief Encounter Casablanca Love Actually How many features has Leonardo DiCaprio made with Martin Scorsese? 4 5 6 7 Who is the odd creator out? Mortal Kombat (1995) Let the Right One In (2008) Isle of Dogs (2018) Licorice Pizza (2021) Who is the odd character out? Phileas Fogg James Bond Bonnie Prince Charlie Heathcliff Who directed a film that shares its name with a Queen album? David Fincher Stephen Frears Bob Fosse Richard Attenborough Which is not in the same oeuvre? Begone Me and a few others Hurry up Absolutely not Which of these songs is actually heard on a film soundtrack? 'Love Theme from The Godfather (Speak Softly Love)' '(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story' 'Somewhere My Love (Lara's Theme)' 'Born Free' Which has someone else as its source? King Creole (1958) Nevada Smith (1966) The Betsy (1978) Airplane! (1980)
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Apex Predator review – supernatural psychodrama bites off more than it can chew
John Donnelly's new play is perceptive about early parenthood, especially the way a baby's arrival stress-tests your relationship. He particularly captures the strange combination of surety and fragility in which families take shape. Designer Tom Piper has shrunk Hampstead's wide stage and surrounded it by scaffolding to create a sense not just of lives under construction but also the preciousness of a family unit sheltered from danger. Donnelly's drama suggests a kind of 100-minute cortisol release as a mother and father battle with fight or flight responses. But despite the nuanced domestic backdrop, Apex Predator's interwoven supernatural and thriller elements are bloodless, albeit not literally. Mia and Joe live in London with their 11-year-old son, Alfie, and five-month-old Isla. Joe is frequently away for work of a sensitive, classified nature. Mia is driven to despair by sleep deprivation, exacerbated by the noise from upstairs neighbours. To make matters worse, Alfie has been biting other children but his art teacher, Ana, is here to help. Maybe she could give Alfie some extra free-of-charge tuition, take Mia on a boozy night out, perhaps offer her own breast for Isla to suckle? A spoiler is probably required here: this play contains vampires. In between glasses of wine, Ana (played with a sly, icy smile by Laura Whitmore) reveals herself to be a bloodsucker and Mia (the always arresting Sophie Melville) receives her venom. Vampirism is presented as an act of self-fortification to deal with the world's abundant perils, despite the fact that these 'apex predators' are traditionally cursed to a pretty miserable existence. Joe (Bryan Dick) is in fact a very modern sort of vampire hunter: he monitors encrypted online forums visited by deluded souls who believe themselves to be the undead. Reality blurs with nightmare, dark comedy is sometimes awkwardly coupled with horror, and scenes from the couple's flat, the school and the local GP's examination room merge together. Blanche McIntyre's production, despite the screeches of Chris Shutt's sound design, is more bewildering than disturbing. Cutting the interval would help propel the story's descent and Ingrid Mackinnon's movement direction could be heightened in a staging that fails to fuse the play's components as masterfully as the not dissimilar Let the Right One In. Whitmore's vampire has an unvaried uncanniness: there is never the sense of a weary being who has stalked the land for hundreds of years, witnessing London ablaze and watching 'a man called Burbage'. While the hold Ana has over Mia is unconvincing, Donnelly writes snappy, funny dialogue for Mia and Joe, their heated arguments realistically conveyed by Melville and Dick, ever aware that Alfie (played at this performance by Callum Knowelden) is within earshot. The humorous lines given to Leander Deeny, as one of Ana's victims, are less successful. Its scenes of foggy parental psychodrama are similarly vivid to Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's 2021 drama Mum, which also starred Melville. But fundamentally, for Donnelly's ambitious play to succeed, you have to feel swept into its supernatural world and I just didn't bite. At Hampstead theatre, London, until 26 April
