Oskar, in the film adaptations, was played by slightly unnerving child actors (Kåre Hedebrant, Kodi Smit-McPhee). Thornton-Walker’s modelesque stature befits Eli being centuries old while looking young, but McDonald has the real challenge. McDonald and Thornton-Walker, friends for years, have a chemistry that carries them through what could, with other actors, be the play’s biggest problem: twentysomethings playing pre-teens.

While innocent Swedes die, Eli and Oskar meet at night outside their apartment block in a delightfully awkward courtship. ‘The true chills are in what people will do to feel a connection.’ Photograph: Robert Catto/Darlinghurst Theatre (It works more often than it doesn’t, though accidental veers into US or Slavic accents from the ensemble may distract some.) Newcomer Sebrina Thornton-Walker plays Eli, who prefers to not kill: instead, they have an arrangement with their familiar Håkan (Stephen Anderton), a middle-aged man who drugs then collects the blood of unsuspecting victims.

Will McDonald, a highlight of Netflix’s Heartbreak High reboot as eshay Ca$H, leads as Oskar, with a surprisingly robust Swedish accent, as the adaptation doesn’t risk breaking the spell of its setting – even if not all of the eight-person cast can maintain the accent through the more than two-hour-long play. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning It centres in on a cold truth: mutual loneliness is a dark, dangerous footing for love, but sometimes that is the best that we can find. Then there’s the remarkably reductive 2010 US remake, Let Me In two separate play scripts a comic prequel series denounced by Lindqvist and, this year, a Showtime television series.īut Darlinghurst Theatre Company’s production is among the right ones, a faithful adaptation (using Harry Potter and the Cursed Child playwright Jack Thorne’s script) that is charming and disturbing in equal measure.

Written by Lindqvist and directed by the film-maker Tomas Alfredson, it’s an eerie, tender watch, where love and murder are committed to warm the soul against the relentless Stockholm frost: the late film critic Roger Ebert lauded it as “the best modern vampire movie”.

Let the right one in book