Dracula at the New Wolsey Theatre ★★

Cast of Dracula. Photo by Adam Koszary

Nick Lane’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel has the machinery of a chilling theatrical encounter, but rarely generates the dread that should animate it. Directed by Hal Chambers, this uneven production is more adept at illustrating the story than making its horrors felt.

Victoria Spearing’s multi-level set offers an intelligently flexible playing space, its elevated platforms allowing the action to shift between interiors and exposed landscapes. Naomi Gibbs’s costumes likewise strike a persuasive balance between Victorian Gothic silhouettes and contemporary detail. Both offer an evocative foundation for a production that seldom capitalises on their possibilities. Yet the staging too often asks imaginative latitude without offering enough in return. Wooden crates prove useful for journeys by train and carriage, but become conspicuously inadequate when the dialogue evokes the lavish interiors of Dracula’s castle.

The titular vampire is divided among David Chafer, Richard Keightley and Harry Rundle. The conceit suggests an elusive, unstable threat, and Chafer lends the Count an appropriately cultivated air. But the rapid, sometimes under-signalled changes limit each actor’s opportunity to establish a distinctive presence. Instead of mounting menace, Dracula becomes an intermittent figure on the margins. His early passage behind the scenery is further diminished by lighting that leaves him barely legible.

There are flashes of theatrical imagination. Oliver Welsh’s lighting combines strikingly with smoke as Dracula’s brides crawl from beneath the floor, while stormy, fog-bound sequences briefly summon genuine unease. The shifts between incarnations of Dracula are particularly well served by light, and a deft transformation into a ship demonstrates the possibilities of design working in concert. Enric Ortuño’s movement direction occasionally makes equally expressive use of bodies, levels and objects, though such precision is inconsistent.

Tristan Parkes’s atmospheric score is compromised by effects that periodically overwhelm the dialogue. Ensemble singing is often ragged, despite a few folk-inflected passages that achieve an eerie delicacy.

Too much is narrated where it might have been enacted. As the lengthy evening approaches its climax, neither tension nor emotional stakes gather sufficient force. For a tale synonymous with creeping terror, this Dracula casts a surprisingly faint shadow.

Dracula runs at the New Wolsey from the 13th to 16th October 2026

https://www.wolseytheatre.co.uk/events/dracula/