BBC Radio 3, September 23, 2018 and on iPlayer

An innocent traveller arrives in a castle in the Carpathians, where an ancient evil lurks…

Although this story was reworked for The Bloody Chamber, Vampirella was Angela Carter’s first play for radio, originally broadcast in 1976. Fiona McAlpine has remounted the production for this celebration of Carter’s work, with Fiona Shaw brining the author to life in an intriguing prologue and epilogue. (If you’re not interested in the other play, don’t make the mistake of switching off once the credits roll on Vampirella – the source of one of the key characters is revealed in Carter’s reminiscence afterwards.) By the way, although it should be obvious, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the comic book superheroine created in 1969!

The play itself, as Carter would do increasingly in her writing, subverts and upends many of the tropes of the genre as we meet the Countess, the last survivor of Vlad Tepes’ line (as well as her father, the Count) who’s coping with the start of the 20th century admirably well, alongside a Scottish governess from the Jean Brodie school. Our Hero (he never gets a name) is not expecting an encounter with a vampire, and indeed has some quite novel ideas on how to help the Countess… ideas which draw from fairytales of a rather more benign nature.

Carter was clear on the sorts of sound effects she was after, and they’re very well brought to life by sound designer Wilfredo Acosta. McAlpine’s casting is inspired – the contrast between Anton Lesser’s Count, Jessica Raine’s Countess, Doon Mackichan’s Mrs Beane and Oliver Chris’ hero is acute, with each voice feeling like a different colour of sound within the material.

Verdict: Catch this before it vanishes – a reworking of Gothic legends that soars. 10/10

Paul Simpson