With towering, fog-creeping castle pillars greeting the audience with immediate unease and a
deafening crash that sent a few delightful screams through them, Edward Lewis’ adaptation of the
worldwide fang-bearing phenomenon reached unexpected heights with its superb sets, illusional
designs and acting chemistry to convey a bone-chilling, suspense-writhed and even humorous ride
through the night.
If by some awful chance you’re not too familiar of the story of Dracula behind the black cape,
vampire teeth and outrageous Transylvanian accent spurting ‘I vant to thuck your blood!’, allow me
to give a brief overview: Mr Jonathan Harker, an English lawyer, travels to Transylvania to sort out a
transaction with a gentlemanly and hospitable man named Count Dracula, whom he slowly starts to
suspect is holding him prisoner for obscure reasons. His fiancé Mina Murray and her friend Lucy,
meanwhile, have a stretchy debate on the meanings of love and what she is to do with the awkward,
yet deeply passionate Dr Steward, who’s hopelessly in love with Lucy. But when Lucy slowly starts
getting consumed by a demonic power, all leads start pointing towards the Count, who slowly starts
to seep his fangs into the lives of our characters and reveal a true hellish, vampiric side as he starts
his plan to drain the blood of the young to retain eternal youth.
Producer Matthew Gale and illusion designer Ben Hart really put on an impressive show with intense
atmospheres being conjured at every corner, combined with nicely varied and styled sets, most
impressive being the gothic, armageddon-like cathedral for the finale and the dark, claustrophobic
feel of Lucy’s room when she gets erotically enchanted. A handful of sheer-terror frights were also
quite awe-inspiring, such as when Dracula kills a girl in his wolf form as she desperately clambers up
a platform, with a clever black-out and fade-in onto his victim’s dangling corpse leaving quite the
chill. One particular effect-heavy scene involved Dracula choke-lifting a distraught Harker into the
air, held up by a well-hidden mechanical prop and Dracula ending the first act with his ginormous
outstretched cape blowing like a bat in the wind into the crowd had me grinning from the gloriously
empowering staging style resulting from that one little abandonment of realism.
For our characters, Jessica Webber’s performance as the rich and engaged girl Lucy was among the
best. Her chemistry with her rather contrasting and sophisticated friend Mina Murray (Olivia Swann) as they debunked each other’s’ perceptions on love was a greatly solid grounding to heighten the
impact of Lucy’s disturbingly gruesome orgasmic displays of seduction from Dracula and her slowly-
consuming demonic trances. Seeing her slowly succumb into the Count’s rabbit hole
was quite painful to witness (with quite a few Exorcist-like body curdles) and witnessing Evan Milton’s Dr Steward grow increasingly desperate and dedicated to solving his love’s hopeless condition made it all the more electrifying. I ended up loving her performance as her starting arrogantly brash, yet immature persona made her humorously confused attitudes to love so much more amusing. Seeing this glowing performance slowly shed into a horrific entity was simply horrifically engaging.
Evan Milton, speaking of which, also gave a sparking emotional churn as the awkward but increasingly dedicated and courageous Dr Steward. His fluently-paced transformation into a hard-hearted warrior of vengeance as his stammering and awkwardness slowly got slowly cleansed from his veins and replaced with sacrifice and masculinity was remarkably played.
Van Helsing, a boozy vampire expert and my personal favourite performance, played by Philip
Bretherton, added a nicely seamed layer of humour to the play as well as a new juicy dramatic
weight of personal vengeance towards the Count as he works to prevent Lucy suffering the same
horrific fate as his wife. Harker’s expressions of paranoia and suspicion to those around him and his
charismatic, energetic passion for solving the case grabbed the audience at every plan and investigation flawlessly. His rather abruptly grotesque judgemental thoughts on vampires and Lucy’s state also got a few humorous reactions from the rest of the characters which breathed in more life to the play.
As for the biggest cut of meat, Glen Fox, who plays none other than the Count himself, gives an
instantly loveable take on the shapeshifting vampire. A sly, eerie and conservative Dracula is
nowhere to be found here as Fox dons an outrageously boasting, aloof and snarling form with the
most deliciously outgoing Transylvanian accent you’ll likely ever hear. While to some it may break
the play’s lurking, uncomfortable mood with his brash and arrogant form whenever he shows, it just
adds enjoyment and charm to the play, returning to the roots of just why we love this gentlemanly
bloodsucker. His tall, explosively-threatening performance makes his darkly romantic side all the
more seductive as well as coming across as a genuine threat in the final showdown. In other scenes,
though, such as when he insists Harker dine with him (and basically feeds him a load of blood and
raw flesh), his shouty, abrupt aloofness unfortunately comes across as laughably unserious (but
that’s not to say it’s a play to take all seriously in the first place).
Speaking of seriousness, an element that I was quite uncomfortable with at first was the surprisingly
gender-flipped Renfield (Dracula’s obsessive ‘servant’ who dwells in Steward’s insane asylum) played
by multi-award-winning Cheryl Campbell. As someone who’s seen multiple versions played of this
disturbed, exaggerated character, I found it hard to believe the role could be played credibly by her.
But while I was taken quite aback by her aloof lady-like mannerisms while retaining the demented,
rat-eating attributes (she has a philosophy of feeding energy to increasingly large creatures), I found
myself greatly enjoying her performance when looking at it from the humorous side as a relief from
the chilling, disturbing gloom of the main plot. Her quirky, explosively-interchanging personality kept
the whole audience glued, with her long acting experience showing in full colours from her austere
biblical rehearsing to childishly begging Steward for a kitten (for a rather disturbing reason). Not to
mention her female character having a demise one hundred times more disturbing than the male
version ever could’ve had.
Returning to the play’s physical elements, one thing I noticed was its oddly tasteful experimentation with different flavours of fright and suspense, mostly having a classical noire take on dark lighting to rack up tension for the harvest before crashing ear-splittingly loudly as bright lights suddenly shine on the ongoing carnage or simply blacking out while amping up the screams to leave the horror to your own insight. The most unique scare of all had to be Dracula’s savage locked-up hosts, who did theatrical displays of demon-like dancing up to Harker and slowly entranced him with their uneasily erotic displays as they slowly lost their grace and gradually became more animalistic.
But where the direction, lighting and effects all show their rawest colours is the finale, which I can
say, without a second thought, is the most intense ending to any play I’ve seen thus far. The amount
of physical action we see with the ying-and-yang mix of our inexperienced characters armed with
crucifixes and the vampires’ dance-like attacks had me on the edge of my seat! Seeing them all fight
off Dracula and his minions with crucifixes like a knight duel was all-out intensely amusing and
the abrupt tonal shift in seeing our humble, gentlemanly characters suddenly go at it with
crucifix hacking was brought to life immaculately well. The blood red cherry on top for it had to be Ben Hart’s most ingenious effect of the play: a sprinkler-produced rain effect, which added the most intense, emotional and personal feel.
But every rose has its thorns, or rather a screaming vampire face if you look at the advertising
picture. Behind the breath-taking visuals and energetic acting of the play were a few pacing issues.
Jonathan Harker’s first-person journal entrees intendedly built up tension for his fated meeting with
the Count, but given how the actual encounter is cut out for the first act’s ending to fall the curtains
on a more dramatic note, the intense, mysterious events that occur in act 1 feel a little awkwardly
meshed in as you’re left with little impression of what Dracula is actually like to get a more coherent
view on the strange events in England. Some other writing aspects seemed a bit rushed over too, such as Lucy’s immensely hyped demise leading to a rather predictably short ending, with Dracula's shifting interest to Mina coming and going a little too sudden for comfort, which could've made the finale all the more intense with Harker's carefully-built chemistry with her.
The final scene, after Dracula is gone and all the characters have said their reliefs, also has one of the most abrupt and unnecessarily dumbfounding finishers ever, which had me thinking ‘….what?’ as opposed to ‘My, what a great show!’ when clapping for the final bows. But that didn’t stop me loving this spellbindingly chilling thriller.
Matthew Gale’s Dracula provides a version of the gritty Victorian tale that’s damn well excellent, boasting gorgeous visuals, emotionally absorbing set pieces and an attachable cast that you won’t be forgetting anytime soon. Whether you’re a fan of the gothic tale, horror or just a more exciting side of theatre, this production has a seamless collection of gothic, bright and suspenseful styles too devilishly delightful to pass up on. To put it this way: it’s ‘bloody’ marvellous.