num_pages: 72
description: Ed, a carpenter turned playwright, has had his would-be masterpiece savaged by his brother, Ian, a drama critic who (upon losing his job) decides he is a vampire sinking his fangs into his wife's neck and then sending out to the butcher shop for a fresh supply of blood. Ian's decision to "hate everything" does not, however, spare him the wrath of his disgruntled brother, who demands that he recoup the damage from his theatre review by restaging the play for an invited VIP audience. Ed and his wife are also searching for their precocious thirteen-year-old junkie daughter, a quest which Ian's wife abets by sending her favorite guru off to look for her. When the missing Zivia turns up she has apparently acquired supernatural powers (and married the guru) all of which leads ingeniously to the hilarious (if cautionary) final scene in which, as Eileen Blumenthal puts it, "one is left with a vision of traditional America, decadent and stupid, taken over by a new order that is brainless, fanatical, and barbarian."
language: English
title: The Vampires
titlecomplete: The Vampires (A Play)
genres: Plays
ratings_count: 11
publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.