Michael Scott has given Dublin some vivid, original and creative theatre in his time and his new version of Bram Stoker's Dracula contains some memorable theatrical moments which few other Irish directors would have risked. But it does not ultimately survive either its promenade presentation or the rough concrete surround of what looks like the basement car park beneath the RHA Gallagher building. Neither allows the sheer artifice required to stage an awkward Victorian text in a persuasively theatrical continuum.
The words are Stoker's, more or less, and the adaptation is Scott's with acknowledgement to an earlier production in Iceland's Leikfeklag Akureyrar. But both words and actions are too often risible without being funny enough to laugh at out loud, and laughter, in any case, is discouraged by Scott's direction, which seems all the time to be taking the dramatic hokum seriously as if to find a social or metaphysical underpinning of the tale. The production is scattered with instances of carelessness (the worst of which is not ensuring that the audience's sightlines are adequate to see all the action) and the acting lacks consistency of style.
Vidar Eggertsson's evil undead Count is melodramatically over the top, running the gamut from simpering whisper to roaring intimidation. No harm in melodrama in such a work, but many other performances are riskily understated by comparison and there is evidence of the uncertainty of under-rehearsal in some instances. Derek Chapman is, as always, secure in his characterisation of the insane Renfield but cannot quite manage the transition from sinister to pathetic, if only because the text is unhelpful. Tara Quirke's Mina and Andrea Edmunds's Lucy have some nicely touching scenes, and Feidhlim Hillery, Brian Thunder and Michael James Ford risk the accusation of caricature as the upright forthright men in their lives, while Stanley Lloyd doesn't quite catch the certainty required of the expert Professor Van Helsing.
