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Dracula poster

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Dracula by Bram Stoker (Adapted by Johnny Hanrahan & Micky O'Donoughue) - Dracula

- New Vic Theatre of London (US tour). Directed by Alan Cohen / Micky O'Donoughue.

Finally I get to play the undead Count himself in this excellent New Vic production on a tour of America! And I thoroughly enjoyed it! Micky O'Donoughue, once again, doubled Van Helsing and Renfield, Jonathan Higgins was a splendidly English Jonathan Harker, Nicola Van Dam a prim and proper Mina, Elizabeth Jasicki a horribly seductive Lucy and Peter Higgins a physically imposing Dr. Seward (my old part!).

The mixed cast of British and American actors toured for several weeks, the assorted hire cars, vans and trucks that comprised our entourage driving up and down the American highways and interstates from the snowdrifts of Wisconsin to the desert heat of Texas. At each venue we would play either Canterbury Tales or Dracula (or sometimes both) depending which had been booked.

As usual with the New Vic the play veered wildly between high theatricality (Dracula's entrance as a towering column of red-lit smoke to the strains of Carl Orff's 'Carmina Burana' was particularly dramatic) to low comedy (Micky's Van Helsing warding off the vampires by leading the audience in a rousing chorus of 'Men of Garlic' while they waved their feet in the air and held up gingerbread crosses). Claire Lyth's eerie, cobweb-strewn revolving set was beautifully lit by Chic Reid and the effects were, indeed, special. There was a strange frisson to the fact that, while the other character's reactions to them were often hilariously skewed from the expected, the vampires themselves were played absolutely straight and were often truly scary - Lucy's first rising in her undead incarnation in particular, coldly-lit and possessed by a chilling hunger.

The shows were uniformly well-received by those who came to see them, offering as they did an anarchic and different kind of entertainment to the usual mainstream. There were, of course, some interesting culture clashes - in Wilmington, North Carolina, we were nearly closed down by a vocal, aggressive (and quite scary) group of concerned Christians on the grounds that our little comedy show was demonic and would corrupt their innocent children. OK, some of the jokes were a bit obvious, and the mulled wine we sold at the interval was indeed truly nasty, but demonic? What a strange, paranoid and irrational mindset such fundamentalists have (cue banjo music).

Dracula stares menacingly into the camera