The show’s description promises a theatrical yet close adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Victorian novel. What it does not say is that the show totally messes with the original story-line, confusingly disturbing the chronology of events, and eventually changing even the defining characteristics of its main characters.
Without explanation, the show alternates an unexplained scene supported by dance music with scenes where the minimalist setting (at its best a plain coffin) is framed by the rest of the characters, still and carrying mirrors. Some of these features surprisingly bring to light characteristics of the novel, like the still actors reflecting both the claustrophobic atmosphere of the writing and the stuffy Victorian context.
Unfortunately the direction tries too hard to be modern and contemporary, forcing symbols upon the audience that eventually saturates with black, white and red outfits, over-bold attempts to represent the novel’s recurrent notions of purity and virginity vs. violence and blood. The visual is too omnipresent, the acting incoherent, and very often the play requires a good knowledge of the novel to fully understand allusions. While the use of sounds (hammering on a coffin) plays its full effect, and one can appreciate the felinity of Dracula, the adaptation focuses only on the sexual criticism of the novel, subsequently turning Lucy into a loud, scattered character, and leaving the originally feminist, “New Woman” Mina as a fixed, wax-statue-like secondary character. The worst sacrilege probably remains this ‘new’ ending, featuring a shallow Van Helsing surrounded by female vampires instead of the conservative conclusion of Bram Stoker who preferred to focus on the restoration of order over chaos.
3/5
Adeline Amar
