Review: DRACULA'S GUEST, White Bear Theatre

A man sits, dishevelled and in some distress, a pig's severed head, blood still oozing, on the table in front of him. Another man, well-dressed and confident, arrives and they start to talk.

Based on the stories of Bram Stoker, Dracula's Guest takes us into the infamous Transylvanian castle as we eavesdrop on a conversation between the Count and his prisoner, Renfield. The vampire wants to die at last, but not before exacting a revenge on colonialists, specifically his interlocutor, whom he sees as representative of the greatest empire builders of all, the British.

James Hyland, whose writes and directs, lends the Count the charm and menace we know so well from Christopher Lee, and brings a little too of Klaus Kinski's Nosferatu pathos to bear on a figure condemned to an unending life he does not want. Ashton Spear's transformation from desperation to madness is convincing, if sometimes uncomfortably loud in an intimate space full of hard surfaces.

All-through in 55 minutes, the two-hander probably lacks a little in depth and nuance, the two men circling each other explaining their twisted psychologies through backstories. There are references to Dracula's wife in his origin story and to a servant too, but little more than that, and one longs for a chance to see how his charisma and hypnotic powers would work on someone other than Renfield.

We do get some rather good and gooey blood towards the end, but a little more of the sardonic humour glimpsed from time to time would also lend a little er.. light and shade to the performances. As it is, the play is probably of more interest to dedicated fans of Dracula and all his devilish works than a passer-by on a balmy evening in Kennington spying the poster in the pub window.

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