THEATRE REVIEW: Dracula, The Untold Story - The Playhouse, Liverpool.

This is a very original show in more ways than one. ‘Dracula’ is possibly, alongside ‘Sherlock Holmes’, the most widely and most regularly adapted story for both stage and screen (this reviewer has already seen new stage versions of both in this year alone!). ‘Dracula The Untold Story’ has gone right back to the source material of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel and carried on the story of Mina Harker, who was bitten by Dracula but was then saved by Van Helsing from proceeding to turn into a vampire. But what if there were long-term consequences to having had her blood sucked by the blood-thirsty count? On this intriguing premise, Mina’s story is told from a police interview room in 1965, 70 years after the slaying of Dracula.

If the storyboard had been given a blank canvas, so too had the production with this show effectively being a live action graphic novel. This involved a remarkable melding of on-stage acting with intricate multi-media staging. The three on-stage cameras conveyed the actors in close-up onto the large backscreen, transposed into comic-art form. In addition to background screen imagery were animated photos of period characters as well as dramatic action film. The result was a very vibrant and intricately sophisticated format. The cameras were also well used by the actors to project close-up shadow images, with a notable nod to the first ever vampire movie; ‘Nosferatu’ of 1922. As if all this wasn’t enough, there were at times a moving back drop, animated-talking characters based on period images, the actors on screen in close-up art format and the real actors acting on stage, all happening simultaneously.

The plot centres round a police interrogation of Mina Harker, confessing to murder after the discovery of a mutilated body in Soho but the story took the audience to various European locations spread over the first half of the 20th century, with several real-life historical characters featured. This required Adela Rajnovic as WPC Williams and Matt Prendergast as DS Donaldson to keep switching from their stage personas to historical characters on screen, often requiring split-second timing. The same agility was required of Riana Duce who as the central character Mina kept alternating between her on-stage engagement with the police and interactions with the screen characters from history. This was done by all three actors with great dexterity and acting ability. To say more would risk giving spoilers to a large number of clever and imaginative techniques of stagecraft.

With so much happening visually, it would be easy to forget that for all this to work effectively, the music, the sound effects and the actor’s voices were all vitally important parts of the overall effect. On-screen caption helped tell the story to an extent but this was essentially a play progressed as much by the actors as any more conventional presentation. Everything blended together so well that the overall effect was a seamless combination of acting with multi-media. However, it is rare to see screen techniques used to such an integral degree (and there are some surprises which have been deliberately left out of this review to keep them as such).

‘Dracula The Untold Story’ is a very engaging and powerful piece of entertainment. It is also an object lesson in just what can be achieved using technology in creative, artistic ways. This is the kind of show to take non-theatre goers so they can see just what they’re missing. A fine production and both an artistic and technical achievement.

Reviewer - John Waterhouse
on - 12.10.21