DramaReviewSouth East

Dracula, Connaught Theatre Worthing

Reviewer: Lela Tredwell

Director: Nick Lane

Writer: Bram Stoker

Adaption for Stage: Nick Lane

A powerfully seductive homage to Bram Stoker’s classic tale of vampirism from Blackeyed Theatre comes to Worthing’s iconic stage.

In this mesmerising production, many old horrors find new meaning and familiar faces shift to be reborn. The company do a sterling job of working with the huge wealth of cliches surrounding the infamous figure of Count Dracula and the many subsequent vampires he creatively spawned. Following on from the tradition of previous stage productions, there is nary a pointy tooth in sight, yet we still feel the bites sink into the tender skin of their marks.

Set Designer, Victoria Spearing has created a highly effective setting for the savagery. With timber frames, the set stands like the bones of a maze with a seemingly infinite number of opportunities for slow ominous appearances in doorways. The open quality of the structure heavily contributes to the feeling we can’t keep out the evil. Wherever we try to hide, we are always seen and never safe.

The epistolary nature of the classic novel Dracula, is pleasingly recreated with lines from diaries and letters passed fluidly between the cast, injecting vitality into the tale, but managing to still convey clearly who is recording events, and to whom, at any given time. The affect is both rhythmic and poetic. From it Count Dracula’s terrifying castle, from which there is so little promise of escape, comes to life.

The way that this adaption ties together the different voices telling the infamous story, while also observing subtle changes to how that particular part of the story is being told, is inspiringly done. The scenes on the doomed Demeter, the ship transporting Count Dracula and his ancestral earth to England, are highly affecting, alongside Dracula feeding his vampiric fiends, and a terrified Jonathan Harker [Pelé Kellan-Beau] attempting to flea his prison. With them, this production sucks you in, while comments from the Count concerning atrocities abroad at the hands of the British act to make us complicit in his crimes to come.

There are a great many creative choices in which to take delight. Three cast members [David Chafer, Richard Keightley and Harry Rundle] expertly play Count Dracula. This allows us to recognise the vampire’s youthful regression as he feasts on increasingly more victims. Each actor skilfully juxtaposes their version of Dracula alongside an opposing character, who requires a very different stage presence. Chafer solidly sets us up with our first Count, a creature in control of his castle. Later, Chafer also plays Abraham Van Helsing, a man fighting a losing battle to keep clean the bloodlines of Victorian England. Richard Keightley so convincingly portrays his version of Dracula, alongside the awkward Dr John Seward, that we can be forgiven for forgetting they are one in the same actor. Our final Count is boldly embodied by Harry Rundle, who, in contrast to his emotionally devastated Arthur Holmwood, brings us the terrifying but seductive menace we’ve been waiting for.

Another invigorating creative choice is to make the characters of Renfield [Marie Osman] and Dr Hennessey [Maya-Nika Bewley] female. Flung into a ‘lunatic’ asylum, Renfield acts as the embodiment of what could happen, and did happen, to many women who inconvenienced men in Victorian England. Dr Henessey gives voice to the minority of female doctors in Britain in 1897, and she won’t let her colleague, or us, forget the plight of women committed to asylums at that time and of the men, like Dr John Seward [Keightley], who made a success of themselves by using them.

As an audience, we are drawn in by this both mesmerising and invigorating production, which both terrifies, intrigues and excites. The gothic outfits that pepper the substantial audience demonstrate how loved this tale still is and how we can’t quite shake the questions it raises about the supernatural and our nature. This performance asks does the trauma of a bloodline have an impact on our behaviour? Does privilege make us blind to the suffering of those we stand on? And is that which separates what is good from what is inhumane, brutal, and neglectful, much much thinner than we care to believe?

Reviewed on 23/01/25

*In this production the actor Pelé Kellan-Beau had suffered a shoulder injury. The announcement was made prior to the start of the show. Kellen-Beau and the cast made the necessary amendments so the show went on.

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A Powerful Homage

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