Review: DRACULA, Reading Rep Theatre

Photo credit: Harry Elletson

Reading Rep has collaborated with local producer Blackeyed Theatre to restage their 2024 production of Dracula ahead of another tour around the country. Adapted by Nick Lane from Bram Stoker’s iconic 1897 novel, which almost defined the 20th century horror genre, it was made familiar to us all through the Hammer Horror films shot in another part of Berkshire, Bray, starring Christopher Lee. Thankfully, they continue to set the story in 1897, resisting the temptation to reset it in a modern day given the Count’s legendary refusal to stay dead. 

Victoria Spearing’s set designs have become something of a feature of Blackeyed Theatre productions with their multi- purpose multi-level  frames to create the various locations, from the Count’s Transylvania Castle to a ship in the Bay of Biscay, a sanatorium in Carfax, to Whitby in Yorkshire. They create the eerie surreal setting of a grim decaying ruins where bats may roost. 

What is intriguing is that although we are familiar with the characters of the novel, Dracula, Van  Helsing and Jonathan Harker, and the means of resisting his bloody intentions, sunlight, wooden crosses, garlic and stakes, the detail of the story is more shrouded in the dark fuzzy horror of the succession of reimaging on screen. Lane appears to have gone back to the original book and style of writing which is based on letters, diaries and newspaper cuttings, so that the tale is told in narrated scenes by members of the cast in the shadows of the set. It was a very satisfying way of discovering the very first Dracula story, having never read the book.

Harker (Nicholas Prasad) is sent to Transylvania to discuss a property deal in the UK with the Count but finds himself imprisoned. Meanwhile in Seward’s asylum (Richard Keightley), demented Renfield (Pippa Caddick) is connected with the Count and foresees he is coming to the UK. The Count  journeyed to Whitby on a ship laden with soil from his castle and as the crew perish, he crashed ashore. He finds Lucy (also Caddick) engaged to the MP, Holmwood ( Harry Rundle), but Van Helsing ( David Chafer) is unable to prevent the Count gorging himself on her neck.  Meanwhile, her friend Mina (Maya-Nika Bewley), engaged to Harker, falls prey to the Count too. Although we know how the story ends, it sets up a thrilling gothic melodramatic climax to the second act. 

The unusual feature of the adaptation is that the Count is played by three actors. Chafer is him in the castle as the mysterious host of Harker, Keightley is the blood thirsty Count roaming around the UK, and Rundle is the younger looking version in the final battles. This shape shifting reflects the characters’ ability to transform into a bat or a dog and how he is rejuvenated by the blood he sucks from his victims’ necks. It is an interesting theatrical device. Plus, the designer avoids the use the traditional trope of fangs or a bloody neck wound relying on the actors to portray the horror of the victim and ecstasy of the Count from each bite. 

The music by Tristan Parkes adds the atmosphere as the full moon shines, while the cast chanting in a ring conveys the suggestion that vampires exist and are worshipped, and Oliver Walsh’s detailed lighting design creates pools of light to focus us on a character. Together, they reinforce the gothic eerie setting and enhance the story telling. This is not scary in the mould of The Woman in Black, 2:22 A Ghost Story or The Haunting of Hill House, there are no jump scares and at times, the melodramatic delivery makes you smile rather than recoil, but it is spooky fun, like a good Halloween party. Most of all, there is a sense that we are seeing the story as Bram Stoker told it, an epistolary tale staged as he might have done at the Lyceum Theatre where he was the theatre manager. It is therefore a fitting tribute to the original Count Dracula, now at least 130 years old. Sleep well at night, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

**** Four stars

Reviewed by: Nick Wayne

Dracula plays at Reading Rep Theatre until 10 October, with further info here.