THEATRE REVIEW: A great Dracula to get your teeth into

Dracula,

Dilys Guite Players,

at Sheffield Lantern Theatre

by Phil Turner

YOU CAN Count on stylishly scary entertainment in this reworking of the classic Dracula horror story.

Ever since Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel about the centuries-old count, vampire stories have exerted a consistent fascination, with the legend of the bloodsucking “undead” often a metaphor for the politics of our times.

His book is certainly open to many interpretations.

You pays your money and you can take your pick between a dragon-slaying fable, the lure of forbidden desire or the vampire representing our lords and masters bleeding us all dry.

There is also a strong sense of female sexuality which. certainly for the time when it was written, challenges backward ideas about women's equality.

Director Cein Edwards, in her second horror outing after an earlier DGP production of The Haunting, says she tweaked the script into an “adaptation of an adaptation”.

Whatever she did it definitely worked brilliantly, striking the perfect balance between compelling drama and wicked humour.

An imaginative staging with set design, lighting and technicals from Chris Halliwell, Lottie Thornton and Harry Rowbottom, made great use of the Lantern's small but versatile stage.

This tale of sex, illicit desire and gothic romance — with Adam Booth wonderful as the seductive, but replusive count whose every entrance follows a blast of dry ice onto the stage — is just great fun.

The whole cast are superb, with bloodthirsty vampire Amelia Travis setting the scene wonderfully as she slithers around the excellent Stephen Bullivant's upright Jonathan Harker after he arrives in Transylvania early on.

As asylum nurse Bennett, Ruth Langrick — who also plays a foreboding landlady — creates a marvellous double act dispensing punishment to Chris Halliwell’s creepy fly-eating Dracula disciple and inmate Renfield, whose mad gyrations and gibberish provoke laughter and sympathy for his tortured mind before he turns on his master.

Erin Lawlor is especially successful as Lucy Westenra in transforming herself from giggly bride-to-be to treacherous vampire, matched by strong performances from Phoebe Mills as Dracula’s object of obsession Mina Murray, AJ Foley's Dr John Seward and Nick Tait as Arthur Holmwood.

Tim Baron ably combined roles as Harker’s boss Mr Hawkins with that of Whitby ancient soothsayer Swales while Karl Worthington strikes the right note of authority as Van Helsing.

Fangs for a great evening, Hammer horror eat you heart out!