Lord Byron and his doctor's rivalry over vampire creation sparks laughs at Edmonton Fringe

The First Vampire, a clever stage comedy now playing at Edmonton Fringe, turns the real-world rivalry between poet Lord Byron and physician John Polidori into a bitchy literary showdown worthy of Amadeus — but with blood-suckers instead of pretentious musicians.

The play dramatizes how Polidori, overshadowed by his famous friend, created the modern vampire story in his short work "The Vampyre," only to watch Byron's legend eclipse his own contribution. Set in the afterlife, the two men bicker and banter as Polidori recounts their shared history and the story of his vampire tale, all while Byron — played by Madeleine Humeny as an over-the-top, self-absorbed lothario — shouts and trembles at the mention of rival writers.

Humeny's performance is the production's anchor. She captures Byron's outsized ego and theatrical temperament with hilarious exaggeration, while Rebecca Wass grounds the chaos as Polidori, the straight-man foil who keeps the story moving despite frequent laudanum breaks.

The script weaves real literary history throughout — references to Byron's notorious debauchery, Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and that famous night when a ghost-story competition among friends at Villa Diodati led Mary Shelley to conceive Frankenstein. For history buffs and gothic literature fans, these details land sharp. For everyone else, the comedy works on its own: two egotistical artists locked in a petty squabble over who gets to claim immortality.

The First Vampire plays at Stage 18 in the Luther Centre, 10014 81 Ave. It's a smart, funny addition to this year's Fringe lineup — the kind of show that rewards both literary knowledge and a willingness to laugh at artistic pretension.