Dracula needs more bite
It’s never enough to simply stage
Dracula any more. There must be some meaning behind it, a new perspective on its themes and metaphors.
That’s pretty much the approach of every Shaw Festival production, but there are some shows — like Dracula — which cry out for new blood.
Which you certainly get with Scottish poet Liz Lochhead’s feminist slant on Bram Stoker’s original 1897 tale, leaning heavily on the sexual repression of Victorian culture and the unease created by the ‘New Woman.’ Women with money. With education. With a few ideas of their own about the bedroom.
In her 1985 treatment — which you can see traces of in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie — Lochhead turns female desire and gender politics into the real monster, at least to a society which wants to drug any woman who strays off script. Indeed, as Lucy( C her issa Richards) becomes more vampiric, the more she wants to … well, get down. That might fly on True Blood, but 120 years ago it landed you in a hospital bed.
It also makes Dracula — played like a hip-hop Bela Lugosi by Allan Louis — an immigrant nightmare to London. He arrives from Transylvania, infects the women and laughs at the chaos. He’d be on the no-fly list if he didn’t use boats.
Eda Holmes’ production at the Festival Theatre hits all the marks of Lochhead’s modernized version, gathering a stellar cast which includes Marla McLean as Dracula’s object of infatuation Mina, Martin Happer as the doctor who can’t wrap his head around this new threat, and Steven Sutcliffe as Dracula’s scene-chewing arch nemesis Van Helsing. Graeme Somerville is also an effectively loony Renfield, cooped up like a bird in a cage as he munches flies and warns about Dracula’s impending arrival.
The problem is that while Lochhead punches up the play’s feminism, much of Stoker’s original story and text borders on camp by now. The cornball dialogue gets a bit much in several scenes, especially with Sutcliffe’s Van Helsing as he explains what is happening by conveniently talking to himself. Stoker’s Dracula may have given us one of horror’s great characters, but it surrounded him with
some hammy lines.
Which makes the absence of Dracula himself a problem with the play. Louis is so good here, oozing Gothic cool in a black leather cape, that his prolonged absence gets to be a drag. Outside of a few moments, he’s barely even seen in the second act. This is a threehour show with maybe 30 actual minutes of Dracula.
And while the play makes good use of its low key set, it comes at the expense of atmosphere. As Jonathan Harker (Ben Sanders) first enters Dracula’s castle, the creepy extravagance of it all is whittled down to a simple table and chandelier. Most every set is simplified to a few key props, with a backdrop of grey, pulsing clouds. The Shaw Festival has lost nearly $2.5 million its past two seasons — shows like Dracula which require lavish sets are feeling the effects.
Perhaps the biggest sore sport with Lochhead’s revamped
Dracula, however, is that it’s so busy seeking new meaning that it forgets it’s a horror story. Dracula is an unexplained, supernatural being turning loved ones into the undead. He’s ground zero for modern horror, and yet he has been diluted into a mundane, almost sympathetic figure over the years. Indeed, Van Helsing preaches forgiveness for him here, and by turn his victims who momentarily lusted over the wrong things. And he does this with a line so goofy, he should have saved a stake for himself.
Cool as it is to see the Shaw Festival bring horror to its hallowed halls, it should fully commit next time. This one barely bites.