Dracula review – Mina Harker bites back but drama is deadened by tricksy retelling

Lyric Hammersmith, London
A fixation on how to frame Bram Stoker’s story disrupts the flow of this feminist reboot, killing the fear factor

Drac is back. Earlier this year, the caped bloodsucker presided over a “comedy of terrors” at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In a few months, Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo will play every role in a solo performance based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic. But first, writer Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, director Emma Baggott and a cast of six – often bathed in blood-red lighting – deliver a feminist retelling.

Stoker’s book comprises sections from the characters’ journals and diaries, plus letters and newspaper reports, compiled by Mina Harker in a bid to fathom and defeat Dracula. This production uses a variety of audio effects to relay those and adds its own equivalent of footnotes, commentaries and what increasingly feel like mini-essays. Repeatedly telling rather than showing, they interrupt the flow of the familiar story, which now comes with more of a narrative from Mina, whose words were marginalised by Stoker.

At Lyric Hammersmith, London, until 11 October