Dracula brings gothic horror to Liverpool Playhouse

Dracula is getting the imitating the dog treatment in a radical new adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic coming to the Liverpool Playhouse next week.

Dracula: the Untold Story sees the 1897 gothic horror tale from the perspective of its heroine Mina Harker

It follows productions of Night of the Living Dead – Remix and Heart of Darkness and similarly uses the digital technology and live graphic novel style for which the Lancaster-based theatre company has become known.

New Year’s Eve, 1965, London, England. Just before midnight, as revellers celebrate the beginning of another year, a young woman enters Marylebone Police Station and confesses to a brutal murder.

She claims to be Mina Harker, the last living survivor of the intrepid group that brought about Count Dracula’s destruction some 70 years before. But Mina Harker has not been seen since 1901. And if she were alive, she would be 90 years old.

Director Andrew Quick explains: “I think a lot of our work has either directly dealt with gothic themes or at least circled around them. Pete Brooks, the co-writer and director, and I have talked a great deal about the idea of evil recently and Bram Stoker’s novel can be seen as an attempt to imagine evil in a very particular way - through its monstrosity: how evil hides in darkness, in the night.

“This is very alluring, but I think what we are trying to negotiate is how evil moves out of the shadows in the 20th Century to then taking centre stage and in a way this show explores this development.

So the focus in our version in Mina Harker. Dracula’s definitely there, but it’s Mina’s story we follow; it’s the trauma of her encounter with Dracula and how she lives with it that we explore, as she journeys through the rest of her life.”

Riana Duce plays Mina, while fellow cast members Adele Rajnovic and Matt Prendergast take on multiple characters.

See Dracula: the Untold Story at Liverpool Playhouse from October 12-16. Tickets HERE