GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
Dracula lacks bite
Skirt-whisker: Jessica Webber
[Touring Consortium]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
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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