Downstage
Nov 11-Dec 16 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

ONE OF THE most unhappy moments in the life of an audience member is when she realises that she is in fact an audience member, and she is watching a play. At least, this is an unhappy moment if she is brought to the realisation not through witty self-referential dialogue, or an engagement of cast with audience, but through boredom. She realises a certain drama is being enacted on the stage before her, and it seems far away and irrelevant, like television. There are many other viewers around who are sighing, yawning and/or laughing drunkenly. She wonders whether the party she is going to afterward will be much fun. The play unfolding on stage becomes almost a distraction to these thoughts.

Dracula has occasional moments in which it engages viewers, provides some laughs and is mildly scary. The first three scenes, which depict an ‘erotic’ orgy of vampires, a nervous groups of Romanians on the back of a cart and the first encounter with Count Dracula are atmospheric and haunting, with a beautiful use of stage space. Elegant set design by John Parker cleverly allows the stage’s height and depth to be utilized to its full advantage. A music score that includes Wagner and Rachmaninoff adds much magic and verve to the production. However, this Downstage production of Dracula has many moments as described in the paragraph above.

This is not for want of acting talent. With such a brilliant cast, you can’t help but marvel at the flatness of the production. The oft exceptional George Henare (as Dracula) has trouble mustering a scary “Mwa Ha Ha”, and seems a little ill at ease with the Count’s one-dimensional evilness (though his shuffling and stiff gesturing admirably capture the movements of a living corpse). Danielle Mason never quite gets inside the skin of her character, the unfortunate Lucy, though it is unclear here whether this is due to script or performance. Except for her final moments of insanity her hysteria is overacted, and her exhaustion is stilted.

The virtuoso performer Robert Tripe (as John Harker) flounders about amongst clichéd lines and acts of sporadic desperation that are not followed through. So incensed by his beloved Lucy’s illness, he insists he must take her to London by car. “I’ll go wait in the car!” he then cries, without trying to coax Lucy away or convince her father, Dr. Steward, (played by Ken Blackburn) it is the right thing to do. Thus he exits stage and allows the drama to unfold without him for several scenes. When he returns there is no mention of the car, London, or the fact that Lucy didn’t go with him.

Fortunately, some actors are given more room to move with their parts. Jennifer Ludlam is convincing as maid Briggs, and relays her lines with perfect timing. She also gives life to otherwise repetitive jokes about cups of tea. With Romanian Teodor Surcel (as the excellent Renfeld), she provides the night’s moments of genuine comedy and vibrancy. And Sam Downes also displays talent in his acting debut at Downstage. Though his character is mute, he manages to inject emotion and confident physicality into his part.

The many ineffectual performances in Dracula seem mostly due to a lack of character substance. The script is shallow and does not allow for moments of introspection, bonds between characters or interactions that would give the play depth. We are, all in all, treated to one hour and forty minutes of plot exposition. Every scene, every action advances the plot. Huge, life effecting decisions are made in a split section. “So it’s a vampire that’s getting Lucy is it? I see. Well what shall we do?” Apart from one short love scene between Lucy and her boyfriend John, which slows the action for a brief moment, the narration is relentless. Soon the rewards for the viewer of keeping up and staying engaged are not worth the effort.

Many of the laughs that the audience did offer up were due to unfortunate ambiguities in the script, or strangely farcical lines that popped up here and there but were inconsistent. When talking about the vampire in Lucy, Van Helsing (Steven Ray) cries “The evil thing that is in her must be rooted out!” The kiwi audience laughs hysterically. The word ‘root’ has been said! The ambiguity is delightful, but does not seem intentional, and you wonder if the cast were aware of it until tonight’s crowd.

Likewise, the first two verbal scenes of Dracula are full of people, understandably, speaking Romanian. When the young English Renfeld visits Count Dracula at his castle in the Transylvanian countryside, he also speaks Romanian. However, to prevent the audience being further excluded from the dialogue, the Count says to Renfeld: “Speak English. I must practice my English!” This moment gains many guffaws from the audience because it is, well, silly. We do not believe this transition is intended to be naturalistic or believable, and so we go along with it.

Yet such farcical moments are few and far between in the rest of a play which sways unsteadily between cheesy self-referentiality and serious wannabe horror. In this version of Dracula, our early expectation of a light hearted comedic vampire story is not met, but neither are we scared, moved or fully absorbed by the drama. Despite the abilities of much of the cast, the script by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston ensures the play falls far short of enjoyable.