A new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Nick Lane is currently on at Darlington Hippodrome.
Blackeyed Theatre’s ensemble performance sees six people playing multiple parts, but with the swapping in and out of characters and too many narrators it wasn’t always clear who was speaking – and the African slave voice and reference to suffragettes leading up to a scene discussing traditional marriage didn’t connect.
The set is a great wooden structure set on stone walls – a local reference, it looked like the remains of Gateshead’s Staithes atop a broken Roman wall, suitably old and chilling – dynamically house and land and boat.
The soundscape was indeed haunting – we loved the fusion of olde song and modern beat used to clever effect and more of this and less dialogue would have enhanced the production.
Overall it was an interesting, contemporary take on a story we know so well. We wished Lane had gone further, been braver in stripping back the script and blacked out the blood-sucking- it’s a fine line between the comical and fear, and imagination is greater than slurping. Less can be so much more.
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