Love stories can survive many things: distance, time, even bad decisions. Eternally Yours proposes they can even survive, and perhaps even thrive, in the crucible of the undead. The idea is startling, and, in Small but Mighty Productions’ hands, delightfully lunatic, as what begins as a desert-weekend wedding spirals into a vampire-splotched odyssey of commitment, identity, and chosen family and friendship.
A scrappy and surprising upstart, Eternally Yours: The Musical is enjoying a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it engagement at the Annex Theatre (Oct 30–Nov 2, 2025). Developed by Melly Magrath (book writer and director), the show arrives as a “RE-VAMP,” a self-aware refashioning of a previous murder mystery-inflected show into — let’s call it a murder kiss-story. The pivot is telling: the piece privileges reconciliation and queer romance over carnage and comeuppance, following a friend group on a Vegas weekend for a ceremony presided over by an Elvis impersonator.
Enter vampires. Exit orthodoxy.
Magrath’s ethos is camp-with-care. She marshals a large, attractive ensemble who throw themselves at the show’s manic tonal shifts with energizing glee, precision and professionalism. Madeleine Storms’ Monica gets a proper star turn with “In My Closet,” a confession-belt that is both technically assured and narratively revealing, which she slays. Josie Bianchi’s Zeek is a geeky, socially awkward dreamer who navigates their way into an unconventional relationship with warmth and comic timing. The performance finds endearing vulnerability without losing the personality or the joke. Joyce Chan’s Shelby, flamingo-clad and able to chew more than just the scenery, is a delicious engine of chaos. And Bebe Brunjes’s flamboyant, genderfluid TravasTea—part emcee, part world-weary wrangler and observer, and part love interest —brings panache and a touching humanity (yes, the irony is the point). The voice sometimes needs miking in the Annex’s echo, but the presence is magnetic.
And the remainder of the company—José Andrés Bordas, Mike Alexander Buchanan, Morgan O’Grady, Alexandria Hillier, Jamie Rice, Donnon Root, and Caitlin Turner —are equally strong, as they fill out the Vegas circle of friends and desert denizens. They each have their moments, and they stick surprise beats as we whipsaw between comedy and danger, character drama and knowing asides. This is ensemble-first, all-in storytelling, and they commit fully.
The no-frills set and simple but stylish costuming do exactly what’s needed: sketch a casino-chapel world and leave room for bodies and banter to do the heavy lifting. Sound, however, is the production’s Achilles heel. The voices are strong, but in the Annex’s boomier corners, dialogue and some vocals blur, especially in moments where belting isn’t appropriate. Even so, Magrath’s direction keeps the traffic smart and the storytelling legible. She manages the large cast in necessarily diverse ways, nailing maniacally fun all-cast blowouts like the double entendre-laden “Vegas Strip” and sharper partial-cast numbers such as “You Suck.” Composer and arranger Quinton Naughton threads styles with cheek, and the strong original song slate (featuring lyrics by Magrath and sometimes Caitlin Turner, who plays Tala) leans into pop pastiche and musical convention without losing character focus.
Structurally, the show’s best overall referent is the cinema tradition of ordinary-outing-gone-ghoulish: think films like the Tarantino-penned From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), where an everyday escape pivots—abruptly—into a vampire nightmare. Eternally Yours similarly runs two different plays back-to-back: Act I is situation-comedy friend-group road trip; Act II layers in the vampire danger, including a mounting body count —though what’s singular is how intermittently the peril matters. Facing the threat of the undead, the characters spend most of their energy (and songs) patching up broken relationships, codifying new understandings of themselves and others, and finding firmer footing in their connections – far more than the single heteronormative wedding that was the story’s pretext.
And ultimately, the show gets to have its cake, throw it, and eat it: honouring the importance of recognizing and celebrating our love(s) even as it winks continuously at genre with deliberate, fun callbacks. For instance, television’s Friends haunts the desert chapel (the groom is named Ross, and his sister Monica has her own Vegas character arc), while Twilight’s glittery, overwrought bloodlines hover over a kiss-or-kill dilemma. There’s a manic, lovely lunacy here that features plot, cultural referents, relationship arcs, and songs of almost every conceivable kind — with the result that you hit the curtain exhausted, but smiling.
Now if you’re like me, you may not be certain exactly where you’ve arrived, in terms of theme or even plot — or exactly how you should feel about the new status quo of the various dead, undead, and still-living. But you’ll have witnessed the one-of-a-kind performance of a one-of-a-kind musical: funny, silly, sort of suspenseful, consistently surprising and smile-inducing… and almost impossibly inclusive: of genre, gender, relationship, tone —heck, even diet preference.
And in an age that fetishizes certainty, a show that insists love is messy, mutable, multiple — and worth naming and fighting for, even in the face of fangs—feels, well, vital. And worth puzzling over a little.
Small but Mighty Productions’ Eternally Yours is on stage at the Annex Theatre only until November 2, 2025. Reserve tickets at smallbutmightyproductions.ca.
© Scott Sneddon, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
