FreshFringe 2026 Reviews - The Vampire Run

Jonathan Laury is an obviously talented performer and storyteller constrained by a game show format that limits his ability to shine.

The premise is as follows: on a dark and stormy night, a courageous hunter pursues a vampire through its castle, each room occupied by some terrible horror or absurd supernatural threat that must be defeated. The audience sends forth three volunteers as spirits to decide for the hunter how each threat should be overcome; however, one among the spirits is corrupted and seeks to sabotage the mission. If the spirits fail and the hunter is killed, the journey begins again with a new set of eager participants, equipped with the knowledge of those who have come before.

Laury is an evidently very competent performer from the outset. His professional training in all things storytelling is evident in his ability to grip your imagination and transport you to the estate of this monster; seemingly, the only thing that would separate him from the likes of Matthew Mercer or Brennan Lee Mulligan would be his notoriety. Laury masterfully weaves absurd audience contributions with the horrific setting of the show in a skilful manner that’s able to keep the show playful yet thrilling.

Ultimately, what hinders the show is the format of the game: it feels as though it’s trying to balance too many premises at the same time. The Traitors aspect of the show (as it is billed on the flyer) confounds me still. In my view, what makes Traitors so compelling as a programme is getting to know the participants, trying to work out for yourself who is a traitor, and what’s at stake if the faithful get it wrong. With a rotation of different audience members as spirits, and with each new combination a new evil spirit, we don’t get the same thrill of deduction that Laury wants us to feel. To add to that, in spite of an explanation, what was at stake if the evil spirit were not sniffed out by the end was, at best, unclear and, at worst, inconsequential.

Similarly, the pseudo-roguelike structure that the game has (repeated attempts to navigate the castle, where the challenges change only somewhat between runs) asks a lot of the audience but in all the wrong ways: to keep track of an ever-growing number of rooms and what the correct solutions are; to work speedily through the convoluted decision-making process to progress the show and see new material; and, unfortunately, not to take chances on alternative solutions to the problems or risk going all the way back to the beginning. It’s a format in which — depending on the point in the show — doing well often acts as a disservice to entertainment, as Laury is forced to improvise on the same material again in consecutive journeys.

What we’re left with is a compelling concept and the right mind to execute it; Laury really flourishes in the moments between the administration required of the game. All it needs is some restructuring for it to be an easy recommendation to fans of audience participation and role-playing games.

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The Vampire Run is on at 9:15pm at the Laughing Horse at Home Bar, every day until the 30th of August. Buy tickets here.

Photo credit: Karla Gowett.

Review written by Joel Hanlon for FreshAir Radio.