Vampires have long been a means for society to wrestle with its anxieties, with each new addition to the genre reflecting shifts in what fuels our nightmares.

This new play, directed by Bridget Balodis, delves into modern Australia’s anxiety about the environment, capitalism, elitism and, of course, that eternal vampiric metaphor of sexual transgression. Which makes it sound very serious, but Nosferatu is also amusing, camp and peppered with theatrical tricks. Indeed it inhabits a netherworld between popular and intellectual theatre, which may make it hard to find its audience.

Keziah Warner’s play is adapted from the classic 1922 German Expressionist film Nosferatu, itself a loose, unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. She has shifted the story to present-day Bluewater, a fictional former mining town in Tasmania on the brink of erasure due to social and environmental degradation.

Mayor Knock and colleague Tom welcome interest from Sydney billionaire Count Orlok and are soon in this vampire’s thrall. Meanwhile, Tom’s journalist partner Ellen is suspicious of the newcomer and his plans for a winery. As is the town’s doctor, Kate, who’s back in Bluewater to be with her dying mother, an environmental activist in the town’s heyday.

While Orlok’s vines thrive in...