John Tiffany brings his Swedish vampire romance from London’s West End to Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse

The creative collaboration between John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett is one of the most indispensible of our time, resulting in productions as exciting as they are surprising. This marriage of director and movement choreographer has given us several memorable, challenging evenings of theater. Their latest, Let the Right One In, is a stage version of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s romantic horror novel and screenplay, currently making its U.S. debut at St. Ann’s Warehouse. An extraordinarily imaginative production, Right One, which premiered at the National Theatre of Scotland before moving to London’s Royal Court and West End, is not for the queasy; in fact, the play contains one of the single scariest moments ever seen onstage. Yet at its heart, Let the Right One In is a stirring love story, with a chilling vampire tale mixed in for good measure. Adapted for the stage by playwright Jack Thorne, the show finds its protagonist in Oskar (Cristian Ortega), a young teenager going through his awkward stage while being mercilessly bullied by his classmates (Graeme Dalling and Andrew Fraser) with beatings and shouts of “piggy.” Meanwhile, a series of gruesome murders have been taking place in their unnamed Swedish town, and the local youth has been advised to stay out of the woods. It’s around this time that Oskar meets Eli (Rebecca Benson), a similarly aged young woman in whom Oskar sees the kindred spirit of loneliness. Eli, however, has a deep, dark secret, one that connects her to both the killings and their perpetrator, an older man (Cliff Burnett) who has been hanging people upside down and slitting their throats to collect their blood.