DRACULA: Bham Rep till 11 June and touring
DRACULA: Bram Stoker, adapted by Bryony Lavery
Bham Rep: 7 11 June and touring
Runs: 2h 25m, one interval
Review: Rod Dungate, Birmingham Rep, 7 June 2005
Remarkably different the delight's in the way she tells itI had been wondering Why a new adaptation of DRACULA? What could be done that would make it different from the others? No doubt Bryony Lavery was asking herself the same questions when she started her adaptation. The result? Something that is remarkably different. A fast paced, quirky, funny, even at times moving adaptation in which the pleasure is not so much in the story itself, but in the telling of it. Lavery often at her inventive best.
Lavery frames the story as a living computer game; her narrative moves with the same rapid leaps and bounds. In Ruari Murchison's marvellous set, the action flows rapidly and smoothly. Two screens pick up emails and offer other graphics. A child on a computer frames the action. Characters spend their time on mobiles, emailing, are recorded on CCTVs. Extracts from the text appear from time to time; they are, at one at the same time, game instructions, comic book captions and a means of deconstructing the play as it goes along. 'I must have been clumsy and pricked her or something' . . .
Lavery shows herself to be in total control of her medium, with dark humour (and stylish performances) she sends up the Gothic style and celebrates it. The ironic connections between the myth of Dracula and the notion of Christian communion are not missed either. Yum, yum . . . (or slurp, slurp??)
Richard Bremmer's delightfully terrible Dracula commands our attention; how many people leave the theatre I wonder attempting an impression of his three-equal-syllable version of Jon-a-than (imagine a Transylvanian Dalek.) Laura Howard brings a tough seriousness to Mina that gives point to the play.
Only at one point does the computer device become over-stretched towards the end as Mina exchanges metaphor for reality and describes herself as a computer virus. But, well, never mind. Enjoy Rachel Kavanaugh's equally inventive direction like the joy of Dracula's climbing down his castle wall: blink and you'll miss it, and that would be a pity.
Jonathan Harker: Giles Fagan
Carpathian Woman: Jane Lucas
Dracula: Richard Bremmer
Vampire Women: Laura Howard, Katie Foster-Barnes, Eki Maria
Mina: Laura Howard
Lucy: Katie Foster-Barnes
Dr Seward: Hywel Simons
Quincey: James Albrecht
Arthur Homewood: Damien Goodwin
Renfield: Ben Keaton
Hospital Attendants: Paul Chesterton, Robert Cameron
Mrs Westenra: Jane Lucas
Coastguard: Robert Cameron
Air Stewardess: Jane Lucas
Professor van Helsing: Colin Baker
Boy: Elliot Clarke
Little Girl: Annie May Lawrence
Directed by: Rachel Kavanaugh
Designed by: Ruari Murchison
Lighting by: Rick Fisher
Video Designer: Mic Pool
Sound by: Fergus O'Hare
Movement Director: Struan Leslie
Illusions by: Scott Penrose
Associate Director: Neale Birch
Fight Director: Terry King
Voice Coach: Charmian Hoare
2005-06-09 17:28:52