Dracula

Mercury Theatre, Colchester

Dracula set in the 1930’s at the BBC. Co-Pro with the Mercury, Colchester and The Fitzrovia Radio Hour.
With David Benson
Jon Edgley Bond
Fi Sheehan
Dan Starkey
and Joanna Wake.
Directed by Cal McCrystal
Design by Lucy Bradridge
Lighting by David Phillips

★★★★ "Visual jokes come thick and fast, nicely driven by the irritable unspoken relationships between the cast (they never speak off-script), and by the melon-stabbing, footstep-crunching, Marigold-glove flapping, orange-sucking, celery-crunching, flowerpot-as-sarcophagus-lid manoeuvres . These are constantly, frantically done in the corner by anyone not speaking. Wake’s struggle with the funeral bell chime is a joy. And there is a comic innocence in the evening dress and crisp 1940’s diction (“Braahm Stoker’s tale of tirror”), and in cloudy visions of Alvar Liddell encountering the vampire beyond the studio glass. The Old BBC-ness of it makes a lovely counterpoint to the absurdity of the whole exercise and the developing disaster. Proper, silly, polished pleasure." Libby Purves 

YEAR
2014