Queensland's shake & stir theatre co made its name with its own versions of literary classics such as 1984 and Animal Farm, both of which toured to the Canberra region. But co-artistic director Nick Skubij says its latest adaptation, Dracula, lacks the didactic element of those plays.
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"This one's just fun," he says. Some might quibble with his use of the adjective to describe this dark Gothic tale of vampirism. But then his meaning becomes clear; there's no lesson to impart, no moral to take away. In their entertainment, many people like to take a walk on the wild side, and in an era when Twilight has proven to be incredibly popular the enduring appeal of the vampire has been demonstrated yet again.
Shake & stir is touring its production of Bram Stoker's 1897 vampire novel that premiered in Queensland in 2015. It's directed by Michael Futcher.
In Dracula, young English lawyer Jonathan Harker (Michael Wahr) visits Castle Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania where he has been summoned to help expedite a real estate transaction. He soon discovers that his host, Count Dracula (Skubij) is holding him prisoner - and that the Count's intentions are far from honourable. When Dracula leaves Harker for dead, going to London in pursuit of seduction and fresh prey, the younger man escapes and goes in pursuit, eventually teaming up with the polymath Abraham Van Helsing (David Whitney) and a young doctor, Jack Seward (Ross Balbuziente), to hunt down the bloodsucking fiend. But will they be too late to save Jonathan's fiancee Mina (Nelle Lee) and her friend Lucy (Adele Querol), whom Jack is courting?
Skubij, 31, adapted the novel with shake & stir's co-artistic director Nelle Lee and plays the title role in this production. Most of the cast have been reunited from the 2015 season although two of the actors, Michael Wahr and Adele Querol, are new for this tour.
Stoker's novel is epistolary and somewhat sprawling and Skubij and company have had to reshape and tighten the story to suit the stage and their own company's touring needs, trimming away some of the characters and action and narrowing the focus.
"We've got a cast of six," Skubij says.
"We've focused on the main group of characters."
A warning to the squeamish: Skobij says, "There will be a lot of blood."
As he points out, "You can't really do Dracula without reference to blood" - but the emphasis of the production, he adds, is on thrills and excitement rather than gore in keeping with the atmosphere of Stoker's original story.
"It's done in a heightened, theatrical way without making it silly. We've made it true to the story," Skobij says. "We wanted it not to be laughable but to be done tastefully."
Whitney, who was last seen in Canberra in the title role of Bell Shakespeare's Henry 4 , came to Dracula after a stint in another popular period piece, the musical My Fair Lady. in which he played another Eastern European, the Hungarian Zoltan Karpathy. Here he's doing double duty, playing not only the "know-it-all" Van Helsing but also the eccentric Renfield, Dracula's servant.
He admits he isn't a huge fan of vampires- he only read Stoker's novel as research for the role. He says he scares easily in movies but enjoys some horror comedies like Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead and Loving It and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
But, he says, audiences are loving this Dracula.
"It's like going on a horror ride, like the old Ghost Train. There are laughs - they let the audience off the hook: a little bit of Renfield and Van Helsing has a few good lines."The latter character's tactlessness, for example, makes for some good comedic moments, he says, to relieve the tension at appropriate moments.
Why does Whitney think Dracula has proved to be so enduringly popular? Stoker's character wasn't the first fictional vampire nor even the only one of the Victorian era but while many others faded into penny-dreadful obscurity, the Count has been the subject of countless literary, cinematic, television, comic-book and other adaptations and spin-offs, from breakfast cereals to cartoons.
"I think it's partly fear of the unknown, fear of the exotic," Whitney says of the uneasy mix of fear and fascination the character exerts . Dracula is an invader from a foreign land coming to England to prey on its women, which brings up another aspect of the character's appeal. When he's not behaving brutally, Dracula can be quite a gentleman, even courtly, so it's not hard to see why in his younger, virile guise he might appeal to women, especially in a time of repressed sexuality: there's an underlying sexual tension throughout even though, this being set in the Victorian era, nothing is stated explicitly.
"The sexuality isn't overt: bloodsucking is a metaphor."
Stoker was writing at a time when the Jack the Ripper murders that had shocked England with their savage sexually-related violence were still fresh in the memory and while he kept the sexuality under the surface in his writing, Whitney says, it's there, along with bursts of blood to remind the characters - and the audience - that they are dealing with something dark and savage. That something might not just be outside but might be in themselves. And in us, too.
Perhaps there's a bit more going on in Dracula than meets the eye.
Dracula is on at the Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre from April 26 to 29. Bookings: 62752700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
