Dracula

Bodies, blood and chills haunt Shake and Stir’s creepy melodramatic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic-horror novel. In recent years we’ve not been short of vampires on the small or big screen; Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and Buffy, but Stoker’s original is the gold-standard and Nelle Lee and Nick Skubij keep closely to it in their lean storytelling. The book is very episodic but Lee and Skubij have condensed it to a tight 105-minute piece that is helped by Josh McIntosh’s elevated staircase set on a revolve, Jason Glenwright’s strikingly atmospheric lighting design (frequently awash with dry-ice), and Leigh Buchanan’s period-perfect costumes.

Quickly establishing everything from the Count’s Castle to grimy London streets, Michael Futcher’s production brilliantly encapsulates Victorian times. Almost at the end of their 2017 tour, which involved playing at 44 venues, and celebrating their tenth year of operation, this Shake and Stir production deserves all the accolades it’s had thrown at it. It’s well-oiled, the action well-co-ordinated, and the balance between hokey melodrama and genuine edge-of-your-seat tension, has been finely tuned.

Co-adaptor Skubij as the title character is a malevolently evil presence in Transylvania, and an even more wicked force in sexy leather gear in London. Ross Balbuziente plays Doctor Jack, Lucy’s spurned lover, with a dependable hero streak, Michael Wahr’s naïve lawyer Jonathan Harker keeps it just this side of hysterical in an hysterical situation, whilst David Whitney doing double duty as the older doctor Van Helsing, whose medicinal bag of tricks included crucifixes and garlands of garlic, and the insane Renfield who feeds on vermin, was simply marvellous fun. Mina (Nelle Lee) and Lucy (Adele Querol), Dracula’s pretty prey, writhed with gory excess in blood-soaked garments to the audience’s delight, helped by Guy Webster’s thunderous soundscape. Goth and gore have never been more enjoyable!

Peter Pinne