NTS Dracula Mina's Reckoning Festival Theatre Edinburgh 11th October 2023 Review
National Theatre of Scotland’s “Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning” is at the Festival Theatre this week (Wed 11 to Sat 14 Oct) and I don’t think that I have been so split over my opinion of a theatrical work for a long time. There are many elements here that bring a new and refreshing angle to Bram Stoker’s classic gothic horror story, but there are also too many places where this work breaks that carefully woven atmosphere that any production like this needs to maintain for the whole time that you are experiencing it in the theatre.
To be fair to everyone here, Dracula is probably one of the most difficult of gothic horror stories, well any story actually, to bring to the stage. The very nature of Jonathan Harker’s journals as they tell that part of the story always means moving back and forth in time frames, and that can be a problem for everyone. This story has been told and re-told so many times with so many variants that finding something new to bring to it must now be very difficult. Perhaps the biggest of all problems is that with so many spoofs of Bram Stocker’s Dracula in our memories it is difficult at times to take lines like “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!” seriously any more. Even Dracula himself can quickly become a parody as soon as a neck biting scene is introduced or a cape flaps.
In this work, writer Morna Pearson does give us a much needed new perspective on this story by shifting the emphasis of the main story-teller from Jonathan Harker (Catriona Faint) to Mina (Danielle Jam) and introducing a little bit more of a beneath the surface, but never really spoken aloud, relationship that was always there between her and Lucy (Ailsa Davidson). Setting this story in Scotland and in a psychiatric hospital in Aberdeenshire in 1897 also works well as not only does it tie in well with one of my favourite characters and settings in the original story, psychiatric patient Renfield (Ros Watt) but the set with its bleak, gloomy and atmospheric look and feel doubles well for the interior of Dracula’s castle. There are genuinely some very good and well scripted moments amongst the female inmates of this institution and some wonderfully funny lines in there too. The views of Dr Seward (Maggie Bain) who is in charge of the institution reflect the views that many men appear to have had about women at the time, and this is handled well as comedy and even in this gothic setting it somehow works.
Overall here, a very good set with particularly good lighting and sound effects, plus well used music (even if it was too loud for dialogue at times) created an atmosphere of classic gothic tension and even when Dracula (Liz Kettle) takes to the stage, nothing seems out of place. Skilful directing (Sally Cookson) gives us the illusion that there is a vast castle here for Dracula to wander almost silently around. There are a few comedy lines from Dracula that do seem a little out of place, but it is when Van Helsing (Natalie Arle-Toyne) enters the story to be greeted with laughter from some of the audience that this work shatters its own carefully woven atmosphere of gothic suspense. Here Van Helsing is obviously written to get some laughs, and this now shifts this whole production into parody land. The on-off shifting from a Scottish dialect to a more standardised English one is by this time also getting a little jarring.
This production offered so much at the start of the performance and if someone could decide if this is a classic gothic horror story or a parody of one it would work well as either, but not both. Here, this Dracula is interesting and Liz Kettle gives us a very good and restrained Dracula that never moves into Hammer films territory and I liked her portrayal a lot.
Also interesting here was the cast of the female inmates of the Asylum taking on dual gender roles when required here and it worked well as the script was carefully woven to allow a seamless transition between the two. An interesting use of Mina and her reckoning in this story give it an original perspective too. Some fine character portrayals here too from the cast and, oddly, I often found the scenes in the asylum more interesting than the larger story here.
It was also good to see the programme for this production giving Scottish writer and collector of folk-lore, Emily Gerard, her rightful place in possibly being an inspiration at some level to Bram Stoker for his now classic story.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
To be fair to everyone here, Dracula is probably one of the most difficult of gothic horror stories, well any story actually, to bring to the stage. The very nature of Jonathan Harker’s journals as they tell that part of the story always means moving back and forth in time frames, and that can be a problem for everyone. This story has been told and re-told so many times with so many variants that finding something new to bring to it must now be very difficult. Perhaps the biggest of all problems is that with so many spoofs of Bram Stocker’s Dracula in our memories it is difficult at times to take lines like “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!” seriously any more. Even Dracula himself can quickly become a parody as soon as a neck biting scene is introduced or a cape flaps.
In this work, writer Morna Pearson does give us a much needed new perspective on this story by shifting the emphasis of the main story-teller from Jonathan Harker (Catriona Faint) to Mina (Danielle Jam) and introducing a little bit more of a beneath the surface, but never really spoken aloud, relationship that was always there between her and Lucy (Ailsa Davidson). Setting this story in Scotland and in a psychiatric hospital in Aberdeenshire in 1897 also works well as not only does it tie in well with one of my favourite characters and settings in the original story, psychiatric patient Renfield (Ros Watt) but the set with its bleak, gloomy and atmospheric look and feel doubles well for the interior of Dracula’s castle. There are genuinely some very good and well scripted moments amongst the female inmates of this institution and some wonderfully funny lines in there too. The views of Dr Seward (Maggie Bain) who is in charge of the institution reflect the views that many men appear to have had about women at the time, and this is handled well as comedy and even in this gothic setting it somehow works.
Overall here, a very good set with particularly good lighting and sound effects, plus well used music (even if it was too loud for dialogue at times) created an atmosphere of classic gothic tension and even when Dracula (Liz Kettle) takes to the stage, nothing seems out of place. Skilful directing (Sally Cookson) gives us the illusion that there is a vast castle here for Dracula to wander almost silently around. There are a few comedy lines from Dracula that do seem a little out of place, but it is when Van Helsing (Natalie Arle-Toyne) enters the story to be greeted with laughter from some of the audience that this work shatters its own carefully woven atmosphere of gothic suspense. Here Van Helsing is obviously written to get some laughs, and this now shifts this whole production into parody land. The on-off shifting from a Scottish dialect to a more standardised English one is by this time also getting a little jarring.
This production offered so much at the start of the performance and if someone could decide if this is a classic gothic horror story or a parody of one it would work well as either, but not both. Here, this Dracula is interesting and Liz Kettle gives us a very good and restrained Dracula that never moves into Hammer films territory and I liked her portrayal a lot.
Also interesting here was the cast of the female inmates of the Asylum taking on dual gender roles when required here and it worked well as the script was carefully woven to allow a seamless transition between the two. An interesting use of Mina and her reckoning in this story give it an original perspective too. Some fine character portrayals here too from the cast and, oddly, I often found the scenes in the asylum more interesting than the larger story here.
It was also good to see the programme for this production giving Scottish writer and collector of folk-lore, Emily Gerard, her rightful place in possibly being an inspiration at some level to Bram Stoker for his now classic story.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com