To begin at the beginning is never as easy as it sounds. Real stories, real lives, have distant beginnings. That's the trouble with making documentaries, or (as in this case) re-enactments of true stories, real lives, especially lives lived as long ago as the Harkers and their friends.
Dracula has followed me around since I first read it for A-Level English. Large parts of it, and some of the most important scenes, happen in Whitby, that most Gothic of Yorkshire seaside resorts. Nobody goes to Whitby for the beach. Some go for the fish 'n' chips but I go for the Abbey, the graveyard, and the church, all of which appeared in Bram Stoker's Dracula. He was blocked when he arrived there, and when he left he carried new pages of a totally re-imagined story. Dracula was born in Whitby, in all senses.
Last night it was Morgan Lloyd Malcolm who had re-imagined Stoker's trove of evidence. The epistolary novel has two major advantages. This form became popular in Victorian fiction. The first advantage is that most of your friends won't know what you're talking about. But of course you know that a novel comprised of letters, diaries, notes and official documents constitutes the epistolary novel.
The other advantage of novels like Dracula, in terms of theatrical adaptation, is that the book works like a file of evidence. There is no need to follow the book in linear fashion. You can make one character or another the lead. To a point, the letters can be read in any order. This opens up artistic opportunities, and each one of those opportunities was fully seized by the cast last night.
I had no expectation, warning or assumption about what was to unfold. As soon as I heard a few months ago that Umi Myers, the most eye-catching of the BBC Dope Girls, was to play Mina Harker, I booked. There's a strange feeling when you 'discover' a new talent and I experienced it in the opening scenes of Dope Girls. Mark your cards for the BAFTAs, Emmys and Oscars. Umi is on her way. After last night, I think her next appearance might be at the Oliviers.
Mina stalks onto the stage in the first ear-rending second of Dracula and never leaves it for the whole show. At one important moment, I noticed the blue light had caught her eyes. For a few moments, two silver snooker balls shone from her head. I gulped. She actually was possessed.
My only problem now is that I have to hold back all the best bits. Part of my excitement was having no idea what was about to happen. The promo photography and casting suggested this would be no straightforward re-telling, and it is not. A female creative team and a (nearly all) female cast suggested this would be something totally new, and it is. I almost dropped one of the rehearsal photos here but no, you know where to find them if you wish. My recommendation is to book your ticket and go in cold. It will only improve your night.
So what can I say with a clear conscience? This is a play within a play. Mina Harker, the only survivor of those terrible weeks after Dracula arrived in Whitby, having killed the entire ship's crew, tries her best to recall how her best friend and husband met their ends. This is a cautionary tale, she explains, to protect us, as they have protected audiences throughout the land on other nights.
This means that this Mina, the narrator, our trusted friend and guide, belongs to 2025. Or does she? No. Yes and no. No because this is still the Mina that suffered these experiences, which puts her in the 19th century. Yes because she holds... what is that? A 1980s tape machine we called a ghettoblaster. You might know it as a boombox. Mina is timeless. Could she be immortal?
There is a hand-wound gramophone too, and 2025 microphones on wires, the wires somehow adding presence. You don't see so many wires these days. At one point I thought I noticed blood spraying through the dark air. I had. There are effects here, and points of real danger for the cast. Something lands from the ceiling with a thud or a crash. We gasp. There are jump scares in all the right places. This is top notch.
What also happens, and we were ashamed at ourselves, is laughter. There are short moments of actual hilarity hiding within some otherwise heavy and challenging themes. The Gothic novel, the Hammer horror movie, have always provided strong female roles. I think this is what drew Kate Bush in the 1980s and Florence Welch today. Women and (thinking of my daughter) young girls simply love this stuff. It is the world of Lana Del Rey and others like her, but also the world of David Lynch's Eraserhead. It is the alt world, a witchy world, and the world I feel most at home in. It is a world of oddballs, which makes it mesmerising.
In theatre and film, as in music, any story that can successfully capture both male and female points of view is always going to be strong. At moments I felt that Jonathan Harker was just a puppet toy of his wife. I felt him weak. At the one moment he decides to take control, he is literally slapped down. It was only later I realised the terrible truth, and by that point he literally was a puppet on a wire.
As we staggered from our seats, shell-shocked into silence with fear and awe, the perfect tune blasted out of the speakers. Everybody Scream by Florence has been on loop as I write this review. Truly, every detail has been accounted for in this jaw-dropping production.
What next for Umi Myers? I have deliberately and with some effort avoided too many compliments in her direction but she has it all. She has an enthralling presence on a stage, as I knew she would. Even through a TV screen I felt it. I kept glancing her way last night even when she was resting, and she was always in character. For a few minutes, when the whole cast began a folk song, I was favourably reminded of Sinners. My first thought, as the madness drew to a dramatic and sudden halt, was that I had time to see this show again before the run ends on 11th October.
Umi's Mina is both the lead role and the lead spectator, the ringmaster, the director, the leader of these troubadours. It is a very strong cast but her role is crucial and she shoulders the production as though she has been playing her part for years rather than days. She should have no room for doubt: this is the play of the autumn. I'd like to see her rendition of Catherine Earnshaw. We have a proper Gothic winter ahead of us, if you add in new work from Florence and The Last Dinner Party, Wuthering Heights and other delights. Strap in.
Tickets are selling fast and press night is almost upon us, so this show is going to be sold out within a week. There are still tickets available in all price ranges. There are matinees and accessible performances. So go! Go fast and go now. Book here.
From the producers
The only survivor of the tragic events chronicled in the famous letters, Mina is here to recount her version of Dracula’s journey from Transylvania to London. Alongside trusted allies, and in memory of her beloved friend Lucy, they scramble to piece together the truth of his monstrous desires. But is their performance merely a warning – or does it have the power to conjure the dead?
In this major new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s horror classic, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (Emilia) uncovers the female voices at the heart of the tale. Directed by Emma Baggott (A Taste of Honey), this is a theatrical thriller not to be missed.
