4 STARS, Feb 28 – March 3. A fun-packed and inventive production which lampoons theatrical clichés, says Alice Cairns
Matt Austin
Making my way to the Theatre Royal on Thursday night, I felt like I was wading through the snowy, wolf-infested woodlands of a wintertime Transylvania. There was snow, there was ice, and I arrived at the theatre practically frozen. I didn’t expect many people to have braved the weather, but in fact a small and enthusiastic audience had assembled, and were soon laughing and heckling at full volume. It does credit to this fun-packed production that it made us forget, however temporarily, about the snowy trudge that awaited us after the show.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a personal favourite of mine, but it’s depressingly thin on good adaptations. To my surprise, this production - a slapstick comedy with strong echoes of The Play that Goes Wrong - was actually more faithful to the book than most films. Despite a collapsing set, wardrobe malfunctions and several head injuries, the play covered all the major plot points from Stoker’s Gothic masterpiece. And it was great fun.
The play is narrated by Professor Abraham Van Helsing, an embittered scientist who claims that Bram Stoker has shamelessly fictionalised real events that happened to him and his friends. He intends to set the record straight by staging, not a play, but a reenactment, which will reveal ‘the bloody truth’ for the good of the public. Of course, nothing goes according to plan.
Matt Austin
The small troupe deliver some quality comic acting, with 4 male actors playing 40 distinct parts, including several women. Each character was colourfully and clearly delineated. It’s almost impossible to choose a favourite, but if someone was holding a stake to my heart I’d probably go for Matt Freeman’s flirtatious Mina. At the end of the play, the cast joins together in two infectious song and dance routines which prove them to be a distinctly multi talented lot.
The audience is a huge part of this play. Van Helsing regularly appeals to the ‘citizens of Windsor’ to pay close attention to his retelling, which he insists is nothing but fact. If you sit in the front rows, expect to have things thrown at you (and by ‘things’ I mean anything from a sheet to a severed head). You might be sprayed with water, or even called up on stage to hold up a piece of the collapsing theatre. At the beginning of Act 2, a member of the audience (the very game Mark) was actually called upon to take over one of the major roles. If, like Mark’s hugely embarrassed children, this kind of thing makes you cringe, I advise you to stay away from the front row.
This might all sound a bit pantomime – and it certainly had a pantomime vibe. But the play was elevated by some well-observed parodies of theatrical clichés, especially bad physical theatre. The set is a stage within a stage, including a proscenium arch and a red velvet curtain. It’s the perfect setting for a spot of metatheatre. When two cast members waft white sheets in the air to represent being on board a ship, Van Helsing is moved to cry ‘I hate theatre and I hate actors!’ Those of us who’ve seen one too many poorly executed plays can’t help but laugh.
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