Dracula
by Liz Lochhead
"Dracula" is the story of the vampire count who comes from his castle in Transylvania
to Whitby in England, and then to London. He exists by sucking the blood of young women,
some of whom become vampires like himself. He is eventually defeated and killed
by Professor Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker. The story has been dramatised and filmed on
numerous occasions, and with varying faithfulness to the original book.
Liz Lochhead's dramatisation of Bram Stoker's novel remains generally faithful to
the original, but combines some of the characters and condenses events to fit into
the requirements of a play.
of the play.
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The sometimes non-chronological diary and letter format
of the novel gives way to a chronological sequence of scenes which
move between Dracula's castle in Transylvania, Whitby and the madhouse in London.
The madman, Renfield, acts as a sort of all-knowing chorus figure, while Dracula himself emerges
for the first time from the audience, as if he is one of them.
The staging requires
various locations, some of them overlapping, and there are sequences that are not entirely
realistic, but have a nightmare quality about them. All this had to be embraced within a single
set that could move rapidly from one location to another without interrupting
the flow of the action.
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"Dracula" Set Model
The set for my production was an all-purpose gothic affair of arches and doorways,
with a gauze painted like a peeling wall across the centre arch for the opening scenes
This gauze disappeared when Jonathan Harker arrived at Dracula's castle, to reveal
the great doors which opened and closed by themselves, and the carved dragon's head
which was Dracula's coat of arms. The central tomb also doubled up as a seat and as Lucy's bed.
The costumes were from the mid 1890s, the period when the book was written. Dracula,
however, was based on the pictures of Vlad Dracul, or Vlad the Impaler, the Transylvanian
nobleman on whom Stoker is said to have based the character of the count. In his castle
he wore long robes from a much earlier period, while in England he wore a black cloak
with a grey, wolf-like, fur collar.
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The colours for the scenes in Whitby were all creams and browns, reminiscent of sepia
photographs, while the madhouse was characterised by grey and grubby white, with light
from a huge, barred window on the wall. Dracula's castle was a dark, gothic nightmare,
dominated by the blood red robe with the gold dragon's head insignia
worn by the vampire count.
The costumes of the vampire brides were loose and grubby white, with blood stains
down the front, and made to fit over other costumes worn by the actors as different
characters. They were based on three different periods in history
(sixteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century) to suggest the hundreds of years
that Dracula had been in existence, and claiming the lives and souls of his victims.
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