Elizabeth Bathory, a cult favourite in the world of vampire films, was a 17th-century Hungarian countess, infamous for her obsession with virgin blood. In Bathory, Toronto playwright Moynan King reimagines the last years of Bathory’s life through a contemporary lesbian-feminist frame to create a darkly humorous portrait of the legendary “blood countess.”

In addition to the gore appeal, the story of Elizabeth Bathory also resonates with contemporary issues, such as the nature of women’s power, beauty, sexuality, and desire. King explores these through the interactions of three characters: Elizabeth, her cross-dressing servant Dorka, and Katarina, the village healer and beauty expert.

Katarina drives the early scenes of the play. Endowed with modern speech and consciousness, she clashes, first indirectly and then directly, with the historical world of the castle, providing some much-needed comic relief. In one argument with Dorka, she voices a very contemporary-sounding complaint: “You figure because I’m a lesbian and you’re a woman that I’m going to want to have sex with you? Is that it? Why do straight people always think that? That lesbians do nothing but be lesbians.”

But sadly for the narrative, Katarina soon begins to lose her individuality amid the bloodbath that is Bathory’s legacy. By the end of the first act, the comedy is over, and the play is solidly back in the genre of horror. Even the lesbian subtext takes a turn to the dark side. Elizabeth and Katarina’s desire for one another becomes indistinguishable from their mutual lust for beauty and, consequently, blood.

Despite all of this blood, sex, and power, however, the conclusion of Bathory falls into bathos. The historical material is morbidly fascinating, but King’s characters lack life and lustre through the second act, as though they too are becoming drained by all the bloodletting in the castle. In the end, it is Bathory’s legend, not King’s characters, that drives this play ruthlessly onward to its historically determined conclusion.