'Dracula' review — this atmospheric retelling places women at the centre of the blood-curdling Gothic story

Read our review of Dracula, adapted by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, now in performances at the Lyric Hammersmith to 11 October.

Summary

• Bram Stoker's Dracula gets a post-MeToo framing in Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's new play
• The show explores male violence and lechery
• Mei Mac
• Umi Myers
• and Jonathan Myers lead the cast

Who was the victim supreme of Dracula? Bram Stoker’s epistolary novel is led by the accounts of Jonathan Harker, the hapless solicitor who meets the vampiric count on a trip to his castle in Transylvania. But what about poor Lucy Westenra? Stalked, attacked, vampirised, then stabbed and beheaded by the three men who previously begged her to marry them? She had no agency in any of this.

Playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s retelling puts Stoker’s women at the centre of the Gothic story. She makes Mina Murray (Umi Myers) the narrator and surrounds her with a female-presenting chorus who appear bold and vaguely sinister dressed in black corsets. Together, they relay cautionary messaging about women’s safety that gets streaked with Kill Bill-style vengeance towards the end. In principle, Dracula lends itself to a reading about male violence and lechery, and our post-Me Too era feels like the right time for such a version, but the messaging seems crowbarred in here, and its delivery feels didactic when the action is paused for earnest lectures addressed directly to the audience.

With the story wrapped up in 90 minutes, it’s a marvel any of the additional material fits in, yet we still get plenty on Jonathan (Jack Myers) and Mina’s courtship, Mina and Lucy’s (Mei Mac) fierce friendship, and Dracula’s journey from Transylvania to Whitby – for which Adam Cork’s sound design of creaking sails coupled with some salty-looking fog conjures vivid seafaring imagery.

It’s stressed early on that all the events being relayed took place in the past (cue a few tape-rewinding sound effects from Cork). Myers’ traumatised Jonathan gets to recount the bits Mina wasn’t present for, but when the two start bickering over the details, it loses tension, as it does when Mina pauses to deliver a heartfelt eulogy for Lucy, and when she imagines a conversation she wishes she’d had with Lucy before her engagement. The latter is a pertinent idea, but its execution is frustratingly laboured.

Still, Emma Baggott’s production is impressively atmospheric, with enough jump scares, blood-curdling apparitions and chilling illusions conjured by John Bulleid and Gareth Kaylan to define it as a horror. Demonic creatures appear from the gloom to stalk their bed-bound victims, while Dracula himself is, for the most part, a shadowy presence – or simply a shadow – with a miked-up booming voice giving him an omnipresent authority. Grace Smart’s set design traps the characters in front of the hostile-looking stone walls of Dracula’s castle: a reminder that there’s no escape.

Morgan’s vision is perhaps most powerful when Dracula (here embodied by Myers) attacks Mina. It’s a scene akin to a rape, with Dracula on top of her, thrusting between sucks of her blood. Just as violent is the image of Lucy’s trio of once-drippy suitors taking turns to stab her corpse with a stake, while seeming to derive a disturbing amount of pleasure from it.

Mac is convincing as a Lucy who becomes steadily more demented under the influence of her poisoned blood. And Myers is captivating as the anguished survivor, seeking justice for her friend at any cost. But Malcolm’s widening of the lens to all wronged women bursts the bubble of the story in a way that feels contrived. Ultimately, the fangs of this Dracula aren’t as sharp as they could be.

Dracula is at the Lyric Hammersmith to 11 October. Book Dracula tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Dracula (Photos by Marc Brenner)