Preview: Dracula, Arnos Vale Cemetery

After acclaimed outings with Look Back in Anger and Arthur Miller’s Two Way Mirror, Bristol’s Red Rope Theatre are turning Gothic this month with Liz Lochhead’s adaptation of Dracula, staged in the none-more atmospheric setting of Arnos Vale Cemetery and featuring magic and illusion by Bristol’s Peter Clifford and live music from Thomas & Thomas.

Here’s Red Rope’s co-producer Robert Chapman to tell us more.

From Look Back in Anger to Dracula is quite a change. Tell us the genesis of your latest show.
Arnos Vale Cemetery has programmed a Gothic Romance season, comprising film screenings – and we thought a theatrical event would make a strong centre-piece. All of us were very familiar with the novel, the various film adaptations and – in particular – Liz Lochhead’s wonderful play, which questions and subverts elements of the story, without turning it on its head. Being such a well-known piece, it’s perhaps not our normal fare – but the opportunity to do it in this setting got our imaginations buzzing and we just couldn’t resist.

Is Dracula simply the archetypal Gothic chiller – or are there deeper human themes in there? 
Both! Even if people don’t know the details, they know the young man arriving at the foreboding castle and the mysterious count, the vampire brides and so on. If anything, the chills have been multiplied by the images we carry from film versions – be it Todd Browning’s 1931 version with its flickering black and white and ominous silences, or Murnau’s unsettling silent version Nosferatu, or Francis Ford Coppola’s version, which really focused on the romance in the novel.
But the human themes are manifold: unrequited love, lust, female sexuality, jealousy and paranoia. It also pokes fun at Enlightenment thinking: the hero is a scientist, but one who maintains an open mind and doesn’t dismiss myths, because within myths can be grains of truth. 

How richly drawn are Dracula’s characters? Do they go beyond the clichéd dark villain, ingénue etcetera?
The characters are extraordinary shades of grey, something that Liz Lochhead excels at. Dracula is both a repellent killer – and a victim of his blood lust. Mina and Lucy are frustrated by how they are perceived as Victorian women – they both desire the intervention of ‘the other’ that Dracula represents, whilst fighting against it.
The men’s arrogance – towards women, ‘foreigners’, people with mental illness, anything that interrupts their post-Enlightenment universe of facts and order – is put under the microscope, but they, too, are sympathetic at moments. Jonathan Harker goes through turmoil when he thinks he has betrayed Mina. Renfield – the shadow of Dracula, in many ways – is acutely mentally ill, but finds clarity and truths that other characters take longer to identify. 

Great to see Peter Clifford’s name on the programme. What’s his role? 
Peter Clifford is, of course, brilliant. He’s a fine actor and rightly acclaimed as a magician and illusionist. We were very keen to exploit the story’s supernatural element, and the sense that the narrative isn’t always trustworthy, through magic and illusion. We’re so lucky to have Peter in Bristol and he was very enthusiastic – he’s worked on versions of Dracula in the past, so he knows what will work! He will bring so much to the imagery of the piece with his ideas.

What’s Red Rope’s ethos – what gets you out of bed and onto the next show?
Red Rope was created out of a desire to serve audiences outside of London with plays they might otherwise struggle to see. There’s a wonderful amount of new writing, in addition to Shakespeare that we can access outside of the capital, but it’s not always so easy to see minor, or seldom-performed works by established playwrights.
Making theatre is hard, expensive and full of pitfalls. But the thought of ‘dormant’ plays that can be brought back to life and put before audiences outside London is the fuel that keeps us going.

Dracula is at Arnos Vale Cemetery from Saturday, November 14 to Saturday, November 21. Recommended for ages 16+. Indoor/outdoor, promenade performance. Bring warm clothes and sensible shoes. Torches also recommended.

For more info and to book tickets, visit www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dracula-red-rope-theatre-tickets-17828628909