emotionally intelligent, visually assured, and anchored by outstanding performances
At Underbelly Boulevard Soho, the National Youth Theatre REP Company’s production of Let the Right One In embraces both the tenderness and terror of adolescence. Adapted by Jack Thorne from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s cult novel and the acclaimed film directed by Tomas Alfredson, the production captures the story’s eerie melancholy with remarkable confidence. Directed by James Dacre, this is a version that understands the emotional ache at the centre of the vampire myth. Even when the production occasionally holds itself back from pushing its horror into something more truly unsettling, nearly every creative element is executed with striking precision.
At its core, Let the Right One In has never really been about vampires. It is about loneliness. About children left emotionally stranded by the adults around them. About the dangerous intensity of being truly seen for the first time. Dacre’s production leans heavily into this emotional framework, grounding the supernatural in something painfully recognisable. The housing estate setting feels claustrophobic and emotionally barren, creating a world in which violence and alienation become inseparable from adolescence itself.
The young cast are exceptional across the board, bringing a startling emotional intelligence to material that could easily collapse into stylised gloom. At the centre are Nicky Dune’s Oskar and Rachael Dowsett’s Eli, whose relationship becomes the aching emotional core of the production. Dune gives Oskar a painful interiority, allowing the character’s loneliness and suppressed rage to simmer beneath even his quieter moments, while Dowsett balances Eli’s vulnerability with something ancient and quietly terrifying. Their chemistry avoids sentimentality entirely. Instead, it captures the awkwardness, desperation, and tentative tenderness of two profoundly isolated children trying to build a fragile sense of belonging together.
Visually and physically, the production is frequently stunning. The set’s use of monkey bars is an especially inspired touch, transforming the stage into something that feels simultaneously like a playground and a prison. Beyond their visual impact, the structures require immense physical precision from the cast, who navigate them with remarkable fluidity throughout. The production’s movement direction is consistently impressive, particularly during sequences such as the pool scene, which is executed with an almost dreamlike elegance despite the violence simmering beneath it. These moments never feel gimmicky or over-choreographed. Instead, they deepen the story’s sense of emotional and physical instability.
The staging also makes beautiful use of the theatre’s verticality and multiple levels. Characters hover above one another, observe from corners, or retreat into isolated spaces, reinforcing the production’s preoccupation with surveillance, alienation, and emotional distance. Scenes bleed seamlessly across the stage, creating an atmosphere that feels constantly in motion, as though the world itself refuses stability.
Michelle Asante and Colin Tierney provide strong anchors within the adult world surrounding them, though the production smartly refuses to centre adult perspectives. Instead, the adults drift through the story as exhausted, damaged presences unable to fully protect or understand the children around them. This imbalance becomes one of the production’s strongest thematic threads.
The lighting design does extraordinary work shaping the emotional temperature of the piece, shifting between icy isolation and sudden bursts of visceral violence. Moments of horror arrive sharply and effectively, though there are times when the production feels hesitant to fully surrender to the brutality embedded within the material. Given the emotional and physical extremity of Lindqvist’s story, one occasionally longs for something messier, riskier, and more genuinely disturbing.
There is also something particularly fitting about this material being performed by the National Youth Theatre REP Company. The production understands adolescence not as a sentimental transitional phase but as something genuinely frightening. The young performers capture this instability with remarkable clarity, often finding emotional truths that more polished productions can smooth away.
If the production falls just short of greatness, it is only because one senses how much further it could go. The atmosphere, performances, and direction are all so strong that you occasionally wish the show would push beyond elegance into something truly feral. Yet even without fully embracing that abyss, this remains an immensely accomplished production: emotionally intelligent, visually assured, and anchored by outstanding performances from a company of young actors who more than rise to the demands of the material.
The National Youth Theatre REP Company’s production of Let the Right One In runs at Underbelly Boulevard Soho until 23rd May 2026. Tickets here.