Thunder, lightning, very, very… atmospheric and, according to the school party sitting near me, at times quite frightening. Sound and music, light and projections are the most striking features of this National Theatre of Scotland and Aberdeen Performing Arts’s coproduction, a new reworking by Morna Pearson of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel.
Platforms and gantries stand stark against jagged, fragmented back walls (Kenneth MacLeod’s design). At first, this backdrop seems solid. It encloses those incarcerated in the “Aberdeen asylum for women”, where new arrival Mina (Danielle Jam) has a tale to tell. As in the 2021 version of the story by touring company Imitating the Dog, Mina is the central character, recollecting events via flashbacks.
In Dracula’s Transylvanian castle, the backdrop starts to come to life: thin red lines trickle down walls, while distant wolves howl and Mina’s fiance, Jonathan (Catriona Faint), is menaced by Liz Kettle’s black-clad, eerily gliding Count, keen to reach Aberdeenshire and its long, dark winter nights. As the action progresses and blood is drunk (Mina’s friend, Lucy, is the first victim), the red trickle along the back walls swells and spreads until it resembles a network of pulsating veins, enclosing all (Lewis Den Hertog, video; Aideen Malone, lighting).
Accompanying these visuals is Benji Bower’s emotion-stirring music, now menacingly rhythmic, now high-note intense (impelling at moments of crisis, elsewhere, it’s intrusive, swamping the actors and drowning their words).
The sound and light effects, a cross between Hammer horror and Victorian melodrama, come across well in the Matcham splendour of His Majesty’s auditorium, but they are not enough to carry the evening. Other aspects of the production are less satisfying. Pearson’s plot is patchy (a surprise twist lacks justification); characters and relationships are underdeveloped, leaving little for the actors to get their teeth into. Vicki Manderson’s movement direction injects dynamism and tension into Sally Cookson’s slow-paced direction. The lifeblood of the action is in its performances, with special mention to Natalie Arle-Toyne’s Van Helsing, Anne Lacey’s Mr Swails and Ros Watt’s Renfield.
