RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
Dracula lacks bite
Skirt-whisker: Jessica Webber
[Touring Consortium]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
Dracula
Alhambra Theatre, Bradford
THERE ought to be plenty for the audience to sink their teeth into with Touring Consortium Theatre’s adaptation of Dracula.
The company has updated Bram Stoker’s gothic classic with a nod to Hammer Horror camp, with solicitor Jonathan Harker being offered blood-like soup upon his arrival in Transylvania and his schoolteacher fiancee Mina complaining of “slight toothache” after falling victim to the Count.
It also draws on female empowerment, with the aristocratic Lucy Westenra (Jessica Webber) recast here as a sexually liberated young woman. Psychiatric hospital patient Renfield (Cheryl Campbell) is somewhat surreally shown giving birth to Dracula and the Count’s brides demonstrate their hunger through an expressive physical-theatre scene.
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