Theatre / Dracula
Review: Dracula: The Bloody Truth
Exeter-based physical comedy troupe Le Navet Bete, known for their farcical, hilarious and high-energy family shows (including Dick Tracy, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the forthcoming A Christmas Carol), take a walk on the spooky side with their latest production, Dracula: The Bloody Truth.
Designer Phil Eddolls, who also did the design for Mark Bruce Company’s fabulous dance version of the eponymous vampire, has come up with a real chocolate box of a set: an ornate gilded proscenium arch with a faded and patched pair of real red velvet curtains rescued from an old fleapit.
is needed now More than ever
The set is a treat for anyone who loves dusty old theatrical traditions, and the hidden mechanics of the proscenium go on to star heavily in the ensuing onstage shenanigans (spoiler alert: if you look like an innocent twit who likes to help out when things go wrong, sit in the front row). The faded curtains part to reveal a promising first scene replete with theatrical magic, fast tricks and illusions.
Pics: Mark Dawson Photography
Bram Stoker’s classic tale is a strangely complicated embroidery of sea-voyages, fifty coffins full of earth and much blood-sucking that races back and forth across continents, from Whitby to Budapest to Transylvania and back again. The four performers gamely, but perhaps unwisely, attempt to tell the sprawling tale in its entirety, playing 40 characters who do a lot of the aforementioned racing about. It’s a highly technical show, with a dizzying number of exits and entrances, doors, windows, sound and special effects and other stuff, including a carriage and pair of horses… okay, one crappy toy rocking horse.
Even though more dramaturgical and editorial choices could have been made, the opening night of this national tour was feverish and funny and the show promises to slick-up on a nightly basis as it goes along. It’s when the action settles, and small, nuanced, clown-inspired tableaux are allowed to develop, that it becomes belly-laugh funny: two ‘girlfriends’ sit on a collapsed chaise longue and attempt to have a cosy tete-a-tete over tea; a blood transfusion is administered using a shonky contraption with plug-in wires; a coat is hung up on a hook painted on the wall and falls to the ground; a log is thrown on a painted hearth-fire and bounces off again; fingers are repeatedly caught in a slamming window.
Old tricks, but their anticipation works every time on the funny bones, as does the endless deconstruction of ‘poor theatre’ techniques: a shared joke that never palls – unlike our heroine, Mina, wonderfully played by Matt Freeman, an authentic clown who remains highly watchable throughout.
Go and see it, take garlic, take a crucifix, take teenagers, especially Goth ones: “Listen to them, children of the night. What music they make.” Whaa-haa-haa-haaaaaah…
Dracula: The Bloody Truth continues at the Redgrave Theatre until Saturday, September 23. For more info, visit redgravetheatre.com/event/2017/09/dracula-the-bloody-truth/162
Read more: Review: The Addams Family, Hippodrome
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