Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh

The National Theatre of Scotland turns the age-old story of Dracula on its head in Morna Pearson's thrilling interpretation of Bram Stoker's classic tale.

Apparently, it was a Scottish writer, Emily Gerard, who inspired Stoker to write Dracula, and Pearson, who created this story with director Sally Cookson, has the Transylvian vampire moving to Scotland where his/her only neighbour is a women's asylum.

From an opening which has screams reverberating around the theatre, a haunting rendering of Ewan MacColl's aptly named song The Terror Time leads us into a gender blind production headed by Liz Kettle as the marvellously menacing vampire, gliding out of the darkness in a flowing black and scarlet coat to overpower all in her wake.

The asylum adds to the horror element, not that we don't already get it in bucketloads.

Everything about this production is high drama: Benji Bower's spine-tingling music and eerie sound effects will have you jumping out of your seat (or wanting to hide under it!); Kenneth MacLeod's set and Aideen Malone's lighting is dark and foreboding but at times is given a magical coating of blood red images of blood pumping through veins, or of Dracula's Scotland-bound ship bobbing along on video-enhanced waves (courtesy of video designer Lewis Den Hertog). It really is spellbinding.

Rising star Danielle Jam gives a dynamic performance as Mena, the fiancee of Dracula's lawyer Jonathan Harker, whose recounting of his journals to the inmates of the asylum is the backbone of this tale, while Ailsa Davidson as her sister Lucy and Dracula's victim, give a lightness to the dark dealings.

Catriona Faint as Harker, Natalie Arle-Toyne as academic and vampire hunter Van Helsing and Maggie Bain as Dr Seward, who works at the asylum and is engaged to Lucy, all give robust, thrusting performances, while Anne Lacey always steals scenes as the old soothsayer.

Though the main attraction is, of course, Dracula, there is an underlying story about mental health in the late 1800s, and how women were thought to be prone to madness through their reproductive system.

It's not all doom and gloom. There are some very funny lines with a modern twist, which come as a complete surprise and are all the more welcome.

Image: Mihaela Bodlovic

Dracula: Mina's Reckoning is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh until Oct 14

Box Office: 0131 529 6000

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