A bloody, poetic and sexually-charged interpretation of the world’s most infamous horror story!
Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ wasn’t the first Gothic Horror tale (that honour falls to Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ published over a century before) but it is, arguably, the most famous exponent of the genre, though it has stiff competition in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, R L Stevenson’s ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde’ and Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’. However, none have quite the strange sexual allure that the Transylvanian aristocrat has, even to this day. This creature, for human he most certainly isn’t, should be repulsive, but yet the opposite is true. The vampire has taken on an eerie glamour, coupled with a sense of tragedy. Hence the success of Anne Rice’s ‘Vampire Lestat’ books and the ‘Twilight’ series by Stephanie Meyer.
Of course, folkloric vampires predate Dracula by centuries, with demons showing what we would consider to be vampiric ways and practices noted by the Romans, Mesopotamians and the Ancient Greeks. But these creatures were ruddy, or purplish in colour, and bloated from the drinking of blood, a far cry from the slim, pale skinned figures we associate with the term now. And frankly a lot less sexy.
Liz Lochead is a Scottish playwright and poet who adapted ‘Dracula’ for the stage in 1985. She made a number of changes to the tale, but then reducing a novel of several hundred pages down to a workable two act play was always going to require that. Lucy Westernra and Mina Murray became sisters sharing the surname Westerman. Arthur Holmwood, also known as Lord Godalming, and American Quincey Morris, two of Lucy Westernra’s suitors, are excised from the script while Renfield’s part is expanded on. In come new characters, such as Nurses Grice and Nisbett, as well as Orderly Drinkwater, at Dr Seward’s asylum, and to add a working class voice to the narrative, Florrie Hathersage, the Westerman’s maid. Across the whole script, the language has been updated to provide a level of humour and innuendo, while focusing on female sexuality and madness.
Do the changes work? Certainly Renfield’s character, and the story, benefits from the extra time spent with him. He’s more articulate, even sympathetic. A victim who can see his own doom coming. Mina though is something less in this version. Pared back, she’s no longer the architect of Dracula’s downfall, nor is Lucy any the stronger for having been reshaped for the late 20th Century. Dracula remains however, untouched, his presence throughout underlined by over a century of cultural familiarity.
