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CARMILLA

Reviewed by Neal Weaver

Actaeon Players at the Lyric-Hyperion Theatre Café

Through November 8

David McDowell Blue’s play is loosely based on an 1872 Novella about lesbian vampires by Irish writer Sheridan LaFanu. Blue has transposed the story to Europe at the end of World War II and sharpened the lesbian slant. In his retelling, Austrian Laura Fontaine (Erin Reed) is seeking to emigrate to England to join relatives there. But the fact that her cousin Spieldorf (Gary Shaw) was an ardent convert to Nazi-ism and confiscated fabulous art treasures from Jewish families has cast suspicion on Laura and her father.

A British military officer, Captain Martin (Belinda Howell), must question Laura in an attempt to discover if she was a collaborator or an innocent victim. As the girl sets out to tell her strange story, the play rolls back to 1938, before the war, and Laura is living in a remote, decaying castle with her father (Doug Haverty) and their house-keeper Madam Perradon (Ellen Burr). A sudden auto crash near the castle deposits a mysterious Countess (Courtney Berck) and her semi-invalid daughter Carmilla (Lauren Kathryn) on their doorstep. Pleading her daughter’s fragile state, the Countess prevails upon Herr Fontaine to give the girl shelter until she’s stronger. Soon after, Laura and Carmilla become friends, and then lovers.

At this point the tale becomes increasingly convoluted. It appears that Carmilla is a vampire, and there are hints that she’s been around since the 17^th Century. We hear about villages in the neighborhood whose entire population died off under curious circumstances, and the strange death of Spieldorf’s daughter Berta.

The play Is intriguing for a while, but ultimately it lacks focus and seems merely unbelievable. And, though the program tells us that the play takes place in a small apartment in Gratz, Austria in 1945, director Mark Hein has chosen to play it on a nearly bare stage so that it seems to take place in limbo, further adding to the sense of unreality. The actors work dutifully to make sense of it all (and Shaw contributes a stylish vignette as Spieldorf), but their efforts are undercut by a script that fails to fully articulate the action.

Actaeon Players at Lyric-Hyperion Theatre & Café, 2106 Hyperion Avenue, Silver Lake; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through Nov. 8. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2282927 Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission.