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why did DRACULA divide the critics? | review roundup for the West End play starring Cynthia Erivo
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Your new home is now ready. Dr. Horton, America's builder has new homes that are ready today. With new construction communities throughout the Puget Sound and Central Washington areas And more coming, Dr. Horton has the right home for you at Dr. Horton. We're still building with more construction, more communities and more homes available every day. Tap your screen now or visit drhorton.com to find your new home now ready. Dr. Horton, America's builder and Equal Housing Opportunity Builder.
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As I'm sitting here, it has just turned 1am on what is now the morning of Wednesday 18th February. And just a few hours ago a bold new one person production of Dracula opened in the West End, adapted and directed by Kip Williams and starring Cynthia Erivo. And it has completely and utterly divided London's critics with two star takedowns on one side and qualified four star praise on the other. We are about to find out why Dracula and Cynthia Revo have split opinion. But just before we begin this brand new West End review roundup, an introduction to me for those of you who may be meeting me for the very first time. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome to my theatre themed YouTube channel or hello if you are listening to this on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre as a full time theatre critic and content creator here on social media. And if you would like to know separately what I thought of Dracula, you can find my full review wherever you are. Seeing my face or hearing my voice. I shared it yesterday and one of the things that I had said in that review, don't worry, I'm not about to repeat the entire thing for you now, is that I enjoyed this production to my surprise, more so than the Picture of Dorian Gray starring Sarah Snook, which had previously played at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and was another work from the same director as part of a gothic horror trilogy which he had originally put together in Australia. And having discussed this with a couple of the critics whose reviews we might read today, there are people who liked this more than Dorian Gray. There are people who loved this but didn't like Dorian Gray. There are people who hated this and loved Dori. Great. There are people who didn't like either. There are people who enjoyed both. I think it's sometimes a lot more interesting when you have division like this. After all, what's the point of there being so many critics working for so many different outlets, bringing unique and different perspectives to the theater if we're all going to say the same thing? So let's dig into some of those perspectives and read the positive, negative and slightly more middle ground reviews of Dracula as we do. However, there is one more perspective that I'm very curious to learn more about, and that is yours. If you haven't already shared with me your opinion about Dracula starring Cynth Revo in the West End, feel free to let everyone know what you thought of it in the comments section down below. In the meantime, let's round up some of the opening night reviews. Okay, let's start with one of the two star reviews this time around, since mine was a four. This is Sam Marlowe writing for the stage with the eye catching tagline that Dracula lacks bite. Marlow begins with disappointment by saying it sounded like such a toothsome prospect. Toothsome. What a good word. Cynthia Erivo, star of the Wicked movies and so often a mesmerising stage and screen presence. Praise for her immediately. Kip Williams, the Australian director whose thrilling multimedia takes on Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Gray and the Maids recently received such sensational London outings. Fan of both of those interesting and Bram Stoker's iconic vampire, that sexy horror who, centuries after he first stalked the pages of Stoker's epistolary classic, still refuses to die. What could possibly go wrong? Sadly, the answer is this is brutal. Almost everything. There are flickers of what makes all the elements great here, flashes of wit and insight, of an enthralling interaction between the art forms and aesthetics of theatre and cinema. But there's little here of the layered interplay between real and illusory, between established classic and impishly irreverent technophile modernity. Or of that most 21st century of preoccupations, the fracturing, remodeling and performing of identity which were the hallmarks of those other Williams productions. I thought there was plenty in terms of fractured identity in the opening moments of Dracula. That's very interesting. Even Marge Horwell's designs, previously so overwhelmingly ravishingly rich, are more muted here. And that, I think in fairness, is pursuant to the material and the tone of the thing. There are still gorgeous costumes and occasional set pieces, admittedly not as much by way of scenery as we saw in Dorian Gray. And I didn't catch the Maids at the Donmar, so I'm potentially missing out on an important element of the conversation here. But still a lot of gorgeous design work. I thought this is critical, though. Sam Marlow says Erivo seems ill at ease with the material, there's a hesitancy about her performance, as if she were wrong footed by the technology that surrounds her, a scattering of arch self conscious moments and sly humour are part of the deal in William's interpretation. But nothing truly feels felt. And I think within that there's room for a certain amount of interpretation. What I described as calculated precision and dexterity and a very deliberate approach can also feel like a slightly unemotional approach to a role and, you know, the presence of enormous technical constraints. She has to be stood in a spot, she has to make sure that she is aligned with the camera in a certain way. The eyeline is incredibly important. She is being scrutinized not just by the thousands of people within an auditorium, but by huge high definition cameras that are inches away from her face. The overall effect is slightly ramshackle, sluggish and in the end frustratingly short on dash and drama. I do think a certain amount of blame in that aspect has to go to Bram Stoker, because just from the way that the novel was described in that opening paragraph, Bram Stoker's iconic vampire sexy horror epistolary classic, I, you know, I just don't think it's as theatrical as people were expecting it to be. But we're gonna carry on some thoughts on her Dracula here, which I'm particularly intrigued to read about in an interesting touch, African rather than the traditional cod hammer style Eastern European drawl and whose highly polished long pointed false nails are claw like. There are, in addition to Van Helsing with a gandalfish wig, an unmistakable parallel that I absolute correct, a blonde seductress, Lucy, in a transparent lace dress and an eerily serene Renfield. Yeah, an interesting take on that one. Languishing in an asylum in a Snow White straight jacket, as well as Lucy's three eager and absurd suitors that they were. More on Cynthia's version of the titular vampire, there's little force, little fatal allure to this glamorous predator. The show's thesis, it emerges, is that there's something of the bloodsucker in all of us. But the idea feels tacked on in the final minutes and you know, I wonder if it's a poor combination of Kit Williams style and the novel, which has resulted in Dracula being scarcely present. Because the stage time in these productions as they are imagined here, is really dictated by who is getting to do the talking and the first person perspective. And so very little Dracula in that regard. Still, the device of Erivo's spectral selves appearing in digital form and vanishing on cue cleverly summons a sense of the supernatural. I forgot to mention this in my own review. But it's a fun sort of inversion of the vampiric trope which is deployed in Stoker's novel, that the vampire Dracula can be seen in real life, but can't be glimpsed in the reflective surface of a mirror. I think in other stories this has also been talked about with, like, cameras not being able to capture a vampire's likeness. And so there's a charm in looking on stage and only being able to see one. Cynthia, but on the screen, she's surrounded by vampires. The final paragraph here talks of something that happens in the final few moments of the play, when Cynthia sings very briefly, a couple of words repeated. Marlowe says, it's beautiful, but its intention eluded me. An incongruous topper to a show that overall is, well, bloodless. I wouldn't go as far as to say it sucks, but it certainly doesn't bite. Vampire puns throughout, and you gotta love that. In a rather persuasive and very well written review, with which I don't particularly disagree, this is going to be an interesting feature of this roundup because I so understand the perspectives on either side of this. It is so demoralistic, demonstrably divisive as a piece of theater. And I get how people could fall on either side of it. But we are going to carry on with something a little more positive. Let's go to the four star review from the Sunday Times. This one from chief theatre critic Clive Davis. Erivo sinks her teeth into 23 characters. The Wicked star puts on a commanding display in a Kip Williams adaptation of Bram Stoker that is part theater, part cinema. And yes, she sings too, admittedly very scarcely, as we've already said, and with an opening line that sounds a little like the title of a CD that you might get free inside of a newspaper. Clive begins, now that's what I call event theatre. And with so much conversation already surrounding this particular opening, he's not wrong. He goes on to say, watching Cynthia Erivo in this solo rendition of Bram Stoker's novel is akin to seeing an ice skater going for gold in the Winter Olympics. Oh, very topical. Can she pull off one triple lutz after another without taking a tumble? A very good allegory, actually, because so much of Watching Ignis is about this herculean feat that she is undertaking. You know, when you go and see a lot of other plays and there are multiple people in the cast reciting dialogue from memory, you don't feel the pressure and strain of it in the same way. And so where some Critics are rightfully interpreting that as an uncomfortable, jarring sensation. Others might find it thrilling. Are you someone who can watch extreme sports or do you have to cover your eyes? We're going to carry on. But interestingly, Mr. Davis, not unlike yours truly, has been paying attention to the chatter emerging from previews. He writes that word of mouth suggested that the wicked star was struggling to negotiate the dense tangle of dialogue and cues. Those problems seemed to have been ironed out. He goes on to say, at the press preview I saw, Erivo fumbled a few lines, but otherwise gave a commanding display in a Kip Williams production that is part theatre, part cinema. I do believe that Clive was at the same performance as me and the majority of the rest of the critics as well. The shallow rake in the stalls makes this theater a less than ideal setting for Marge Horwell's handsome scenic design. I spent at least half the evening watching the action on the large screen hanging overhead. I think I probably spent more than half watching the screen overhead. And where you had more of an option to choose with Dorian Gray. I felt in this instance like that's really where my focus was being quite deliberately directed. Yet it becomes a hallucinatory experience all the same. If you're a fan of Stoker's multi layered mixture of diaries and letters, you'll be relieved to learn that the director treats the book with more respect than he accorded Oscar Wilde tail, which he injected with a fatal dose of smirking camp. Which, ironically, it's difficult to imagine Oscar Wilde himself being particularly offended by shifting to a different aspect of the production, as if in something of a rush. Davis goes on to say, I'm not sure it was really necessary for this Dracula to sound as if he'd wandered in from downtown Lagos. But Erivo's gaunt, androgynous features certainly give her an otherworldly air. There is something very mesmerising about her facial features and the intensity of her performance and its subtlety. At the same time, there's something about doing very little with Dracula that is in its own way menacing. A character so in control and insidious that they don't need to look villainous, they can just sort of look eerily. Still, for what it's worth, though, I loved the Nigerian accent choice. And to say that it wasn't really necessary implies that with most of the reference to geography having been excised from this version, that any accent from elsewhere would have been more necessary. And I think it's an arguably the most convincing accent that Cynth does of a handful in the show, so ultimately a good choice. Starting the evening in modern day vest and trousers, she slips into a string of Victorian costumes as she flits between characters such as the solicitor Jonathan Harker and his fiance Mina. Others including a professor Van Helsing, like a gothic version of Rick Wakeman. You know what? That's also also quite accurate. I'm going to enjoy. I hope every single review has a different Van Helsing comparison appear only on the recorded videos that are ingeniously interlaced with the live action. I enjoyed that. The format is distracting at first. You can't help noticing Erivo's head mic and the edging of her wigs when the cameras catch them in close up. I mean, thank goodness for the invention of lace front wigs because yes, you can see the lace, but the alternative would not be great. Kip Williams has spiced up the sensuality of the novel a tad. I mean a tad. And there's an odd moment when Arthur Holmwood, fiance of the Count's victim Lucy Westenra, indulges in some very un Victorian effing and blinding. I thought that too. And I thought I was just being foolish and that in the original novel. How vindicating to find out that my surprise was earned. Anyone unfamiliar with the novel Clive writes may find the climactic chase slightly confusing. Yet the snow falling from above and Revo's sudden eruption into an original song adds genuine operatic grandeur. And at four stars, that is all he has to say. I think with regard to that final sequence, I had heard other people saying they couldn't tell who Cynthia was portraying from one character to the next at certain times. And I think it can only be at that point because that is after they've stopp utilizing costume and wigs as clearly. I did have the sensation of feeling like I was gripping onto the thing with some determination. And if I were to relinquish that for a couple seconds, it might be harder to grasp what was going on. I think you have to get into it and stay in it with some sheer force of will and perhaps a prior understanding of the novel as well. Now it's going to be interesting to see how much crossover there is in opinion from four stars to two stars. And with the ones in the middle, what's on stage, I believe was a three from Sarah Crompton. Let's find ourselves a little bit of B.
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- [14:39]
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Alan's here. And the headline here is Cynthia Erivo gives the show some much Needed Bite Already there is significant debate about the incisive capability of Dracula's teeth, the very thing that the stage suggested this production didn't have. Let's carry on. Cynthia Erivo is the beating heart of Dracula. I said almost exactly the same thing, Sarah. Whatever your opinion of the rest of the production, it's impossible to fault her consummate commitment as she swoops and soars between 23 characters on stage and screen, barely pausing as she adopts a series of increasingly ludicrous wigs. I thi roll the tape. I'm pretty sure I said increasingly ludicrous facial hair. One mind here we were very much on the same wavelength. Elegantly tailored coats and multiple accents at the breathless close of two unbroken hours. Gorgeous. When the undead count, whose blood sucking ant have wreaked havoc across Europe is finally chased back to his snowbound lair, she is even allowed to sing briefly. How wonderful it would have been to see her play Dracula or his nemesis Van Helsing, or even his prey Mina. How brilliant it might have been to watch her return to the stage after her world conquering performance as Elphaba and Wicked in a real play. Oh, we're building to something here, I can tell. Instead she is forced to attempt to lend some bite to Kip Williams. Meandering and excessively long. I mean adaptation of Bram Stoker's epistolary novel, which sacrifices her undoubted talent on the altar of superficially exciting theatrical gimmickry. At which point I'm so intrigued to know what Sarah Crompton thought of Dorian Gray. And I think we're about to find out. Australian born, Williams has walked this road as writer and director before. In 2024 he brought Oscar Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Gray to London. It just about worked because Dorian Gray is a novella about narcissism, about a man whose obsession with self leads to his downfall. Its arguments about the search for eternal youth and the manipulation of image chimed with our current day concerns, allowing the technology to highlight the themes and then, in a bluntly short sentence, dracula is not that. It's an exploration of the uncanny of the unexplained of the other. Asking one person to play every role, however brilliantly, flattens rather than liberates its story. This is a terrific read in a Freudian reading. Of course, it is almost entirely about sex and Victorian stuffiness. That was my interpretation. And having Erivo interact with herself inside a red velvet heart does nothing to illuminate its shock phallic value. Admittedly, one of the less sexy scenes, there was probably more pulse raising stuff happening in the graveyard. This is interesting though, because this is really digging into detail when it comes to the compatibility of Dracula as a novel with the Kip Williams patented stage approach. Sarah Crompton goes on to say Dracula is a novel without one fixed viewpoint, presumably the inspiration for William's idea. And Erivo often ends up playing the least interesting character on stage while the more interesting action unfolds on film around her. There is a sensation of that on more than one occasion. Yes. And earlier in the review set, Sarah said, as I had thought how great it would have been to really see Cynthia play Dracula, which we were robbed of on a couple of occasions. Van Helsing glowers in white whiskers. No comparison as to who he looks like. Lucy fades in a long blonde wig. The Texan Quincy Morris adds a rolling walk and some welcome humor. And Renfield eats insects, although you don't actually see that, perhaps disappointingly. I'll let you decide. The screen is where the action is happening. Yet if you are actually watching the progress on stage, you wonder why there's all this messing around when you could be settling down in front of a perfect, perfectly good movie. And I think enduringly, that is something that people are going to keep questioning with theatrical ventures such as this. What is the point of doing it all if we're just looking at a screen? And I think there's some argument for the fact that it's all being created live. I mentioned another theater company who do brilliant work with shadow puppetry and props to create a live sort of a movie in real time. And after praise for individually named members of the creative team as well as camera operators, wig providers, stage managers and props assistants. Good for you, Sarah Crompton. She carries on to say it's an odd definition of theatre where you find you are watching the synchronization of a coffin opening on stage with one on film above it, or wondering why the character is looking stage left when a ghost is appearing stage right. It's slick, soulless and all about appearances. There's no jeopardy or really Any true drama. The audience loved it, but what are we applauding? Erivo deserves it, but she also deserves far better. A Dracula with a bit of red meat rather than this bloodless soul sapping affair. And you do wonder with extraordinary ability what it would be like for her to return in a stage vehicle that really allowed her to show off range, but with sparring partners alongside and a little bit more freedom in which to really give herself over to an emotional performance. Let's head down to another more negative review. This one is two stars in the Guardian from Arifa Akbar. Interesting. We have read more female perspectives thus far that have skewed more negatively and there are a couple of outliers and exceptions to this rule. But generally speaking, it seems as though there was some sense of a gender divide when it came to responses to Dracula. That female reviewers weren't as positive on the production as the men were. One of the takeaways from which is that I'm just pleased there was something approaching a balance between male and female critics. But let's hear what Arifa has to say. Cynthia Erivo's magnificent modern bloodsucker is defanged in one woman. Sh. We're back to the teeth again. Not enough bite then Cynthia gave it. By now the teeth have been removed. I hope Dracula's on the nhs, otherwise that's going to have been expensive. Did the NHS even cover defanging? Not a. Not a question for now. Deploying accents and wigs, the Wicked star takes on all Bram Stoker's characters. But the atmosphere lacks the fever or diabolicism required. Diabolicism. Watch me somehow work that into my next review. This touring production of Legally Blonde offered not nearly enough diabolical. Are people born wicked? Asks Ariana Grande's good witch Glinda in Wicked. You know, I was about to say, I'm getting a little fatigued by. And I said the same thing in my introduction. But the branding of Cynthia Erivo as Wicked star on screen. Elphaba Cynthia Erivo. I know, it's a major thing that she just did. She is also a Tony Award winning stage performer who could just as easily be called a London rising star theatrical talent who became hugely successful elsewhere and is enjoying a splashy homecoming. And this, this one is beginning almost as a Wicked review. Bram Stoker's classic story of elemental evil, knows the answer to that question. The question are people born wicked? Dracula, the ultimate outsider of the literary canon, is played by Erivo, along with every other character in this deliciously wicked tale of the blood Sucking Count. I do put a lot of faith in Arifa when it comes to literary references and also to the dark and gothic. And her opinion is that it's not deliciously wicked. In Adaptor, director Kip Williams, stage reinvention Williams has proven himself a Midas touched spinner of old stories to new. His one woman version of the Picture of Dorian Gray was deliriously original. There you go. A reefer liked that, but not this. It seems she has the long pointed nails for it too, reminiscent of the thin knife like fingers of FW Murnau's Nosferatu. You see, this is why we need Aretha. I don't have nearly as many vampiric references I can offer you. Blade and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh, Mona the Vampire. Remember her? The story is narrated by Erivo, with only snippets in dialogue, which gives the sense of an audiobook accompanied by screen illustrations. It comprises mostly diary entries from journals and preserves the epistolary form of the book. Why? When it serves no dramatic purpose other than to remind us of the story's original form? And that's, you know, a good and daring question to ask. We haven't really been considering why there is such a reluctance to really adapt these things, especially when, as I said before, almost every other time that Dracula has been done, it is for good reason. Reason quite reworked. Characters seem so simplistic that they verge on the comical. Most ludicrous of all is vampire slayer Van Helsing, who looks like a gothic version of Gandalf. That's two points to Gandalf, one to Rick Wakeman with long white locks and weird goatee. And as someone who has endured an awful lot of mustache feedback recently, I think that society has far too much to say about men's facial hair. Let goatees be weird. Man slaying vampires. He's not thinking about grooming anyway. Erivo's feat of narration also seems to distract her from the actual act, acting too neutral in her physical and facial expressions. That I think is probably a component of the high definition camera of it all, but it's not the height of theatricality. Admittedly, a giant love heart appears on stage at one point more chocolate box than sexually suggestive. And now I'm hungry. So, you know, thank you for that. A snow scene is more atmospheric that it is, but there is an abounding sterility in the storytelling which undercuts the building of emotional or atmospheric momentum. What a sentence that was. What a sentence. And I can't bring myself to disagree with any of it. In terms of so much of the theatrical expectation, it really falls short in a way, but it's also delivering something entirely unique and quite different as well. It's this remarkable technical and artistic achievement which I think has completely distinct merits from how we normally appraise a piece of theatre. Arifa has more to say here about the interpretation of Dracula. She writes, this is for many seen as a cautionary tale of the dange dangerous outsider immigrant. Dracula travels to British shores by boat no less and is likened to plague like vermin by stoker. This is not unpicked at all here, despite its current real world relevance, and that would have been desperately interesting if it was. Erivo gives us a tantalizing taste of her singing voice towards the end and it raises your hopes, but is aborted into a few exquisitely sung lines rather than a song. It's sad that the production plays so little of Erivo's strengths, which might better have been reconceived as Dracula the Musical. When next Cynthia Erivo does appear on stage in a full blown musical, it's probably going to be sensational and it might even earn her the five star reviews that I don't think Dracula has. If I'm not mistaken, there's not really any utterly positive response.
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Your new home is now ready. Dr. Horton, America's builder has new homes that are ready today. With new construction communities throughout the Puget Sound and Central Washington areas and more coming. Dr. Horton has the right home for for you at Dr. Horton. We're still building with more construction, more communities and more homes available every day. Tap your screen now or visit Dr. Horton.com to find your new home now ready. Dr. Horton America's builder and equal housing opportunity builder
- [25:30]
B
Sis. Let's read Angeli's three star review from Timeout because his is always a great read. The diminutive wicked star gets lost in auteur director's Kip Williams techie take on the classic horror novel. He begins by saying in theory Kip Williams Dracula is the perfect homecoming vehicle for Cynthia Erivo, Having spent her 20s making a name for herself on the London stage. Thank you. She hasn't trodden our boards since a many a chocolate factory production of the Color Purple kicked her career into overdrive a decade ago. That's the wild thing here is that and I think there have been like concerts and things in the years since. But her last substance substantial British stage role was Celie in the Colour Purple at the Menier Intimate off West End venue. That production didn't go to the West End because I don't believe that it could per rights. In any case, it went straight to Broadway. She became a Tony winner, she started to work on screen and her career has been almost entirely in America since. So it really has been a very long time since British theatre audiences have had the chance to enjoy her work. And since this is Time Out London, he continues by saying the Stockwell born actor was always going to come home at some point. And Dracula offers the wicked star the chance to show her range, taking on 23 roles in a stage retelling of Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel. And let's be honest, it has the air of awards bait, especially after Sarah Snook won a Tony and an Olivier as well as a drama desk. But and here it shifts. In Dorian Gray, Snook's live performance always felt like the main event. In Dracula, Williams virtuoso use of film gets in the way. That's interesting. I don't disagree. There's a lot of debate over whether live video, that is to say a performance relayed via video feed to a big screen on the stage counts as theatre. And the answer I will give anybody to this is yes. The problem with Dracula is that as it wears on, Erivo has to portray multiple characters of roughly the same importance at the same time. We heard a similar thought to this earlier. William's solution to this is to make heavy use of pre recorded erivos. I enjoy that as a plural who we can see on the screen impressively blended with a live feed of the set and the real Erivo. The thing is, there is far more pre recording than in Dorian Gray. And these group scenes rarely put the live performance at their center. Quite the opposite, as the real Erivo usually plays the straight laced Dr. John Seward, who mostly just stands in the background goggling in astonishment. There are a couple of extended moments in which Cynthia is just kind of waiting for the pre recorded versions of her to stop talking to each other. To put it plainly, Mr. Lakowski says Erivo is tiny and the screen is massive. And the pre record recorded stuff is so dominant that it overshadows the technically impressive work happening on stage. Aesthetically, it's harder and darker than Dorian Gray, with a thrillingly pulsing electronic score from Clements Williams. But the ropey selection of wigs and facial hair that the pre recorded erivos sport makes them sound like a music group. Adds a weirdly goofy note to proceedings. Surely he's gonna give us some kind of a line here for Van Helsing. He does offer some praise here. He says Williams remains a fantastically exciting director whose bold experiments in mainstream video driven theatre should be applauded and do often fantastically well. Video driven theatre, that's a good way of referring to it, let's all agree. To say that from now on I feel like we don't yet have a strong enough term for what to call productions like this. The opening section, in which a buff singlet clad RP talking Erivo narrates Jonathan Harker's visit to Dracula's castle in Transylvania is superb, tight, gripping storytelling. When the Count does appear, sporting luminous red hair and West African lilt, the live Harker and video only Dracula makes total sense, a sort of duet between the two them of Erivo's that neatly inverts the vampire's invisibility in mirrors. This one can only be seen on film. There you go, nodding to the same idea that I was talking about before. Some of her characters verge on stereotypes, but her stylish, implicitly African count is fascinating. I concur, and it's worth saying that while Erivo has a diminutive stature, which he's mentioned I think about three times, her otherworldly looks look great blown up on a giant screen. She's a movie star, exclamation point. Even her trademark talon like fake nails, with which I think the world is a little too obsessed, I say and shaven head offer an echo of Nosferatu that's slyly acknowledged at one point. There's some thoughts then, about the adaptation itself. Oddly, having been slavishly faithful the entire way through, Williams changes the ending quite a lot in a way that would feel less jarring if it had been set up in any way. The last paragraph though, is very interesting. Again, I refuse to treat William's style like the emperor's new clothes. He's onto something. It just doesn't entirely work here. Despite stumbling over the odd line, Erivo is charismatic game and essentially does her best as a in Williams elaborate machine. That's not an unfair comparison to make, but if you agree to tie your big comeback to a very specific directorial vision, there's not much even a superstar actor can do if that vision is faulty. And you know it's paid off for the likes of Sarah Snook and Nicole Scherzinger. But certainly it does seem as though, with the reviews spread as they are, this is not necessarily a slam dunk at the awards ceremonies for Cynthia in a couple months. Who haven't we read yet. Let's see what Nick Curtis has to say in the standard. See if this touches on any new ground. This is another four star review. Cynthia Erivo is extraordinary in this one woman multimedia show, a spectacular star vehicle for Erivo which brings Bram Stoker's tale right into the horrific present. I'm already intrigued. Let's hear a little bit more about how from defying gravity to defying mortality. I quite liked my defying brevity line, but again, same wavelength with that opening up remark there. Cynthia Erivo gives an extraordinary shape shifting performance in this one woman multimedia adaptation of Bram Stoker's vampire tale from Australian adaptive director Kip Williams. Her performance triumphantly walks a knife edge between virtuosity and absurdity. This is a more straightforward piece of storytelling than Williams 2024 solo version of the Picture of Dorian Gray where camera filters critiqued contemporary obsessions with image. Erivo has also opened cold in the West West End. Snook had done Dorian in Sydney. Is that true? I recall that both productions were previously done in Australia. Had Sarah Snook done Dorian Gray in Australia already? I don't believe that it was her. I think it was a different actor. Yes, Erin Jean Norville Admittedly, amidst all of the marketing of this production and with Dorian Gray, really very little has been said in either instance about the Australian productions that came beforehand, Mr. Curtis writes. Her first two performances were cancelled and there were several minor hesitations and stumbles in the final preview that most critics attended. Attended due to a scheduling conflict. Is that why we attended due to a scheduling conflict? I mean, I was at another show the following night, but this was definitely the most important thing I think that anyone was going to cover this week. So this one kind of took precedent. Still, this marks a bravura return to the stage for a performer who's gone from Stockwell to winning a Tony Emmy and two Grammys, plus two Oscar nominations in 15 years. Go south London. Exclamation point. Anyone experiencing Erivo's Dracula without preconceptions or comparisons will be sucked in. I don't even know if that's meant to be a pun throughout, the screen rises and falls to reveal a white lit rotunda, an eerie graveyard or a Volvo unexpected adjective pleated heart shaped doorway From Carpathia to London to Whitby. The soundtrack roves from Edvard Grieg to Bleepy Trance. Where else but in theatre reviews can you read about Volvo doorways and Bleepy Trance? It's on screen that Erivo's haka meets her incarnation of a heritage appropriate Nigerian accented Dracula and his three brides. A nice visual joke about the vampire having no reflection prompts the first of several wry sidelong glances flicked at the audience. An interesting note here. It's to her credit and Williams that one sometimes loses track of which character is being broadcast live and which is recorded. The integration is, and I said the same thing, mostly seamless. Personifications of Irish and American characters are knowingly ridiculous. But Dracula always had a vein of camp. Williams accentuates the Victorian novel's barely repressed queer subtext a little. A little. Williams also foregrounds the idea that Dracula is not an external monster, but a manifestation of desire. Die within us all. The novel is told through multiple perspectives and formats, so it makes sense that all the selves and stories flower and flow from the small slight figure of Erivo, as if from Stoker himself. And you do wonder, death notwithstanding, what on earth he would think of this production. The writer was general manager of the Lyceum Theatre under Sir Henry Irving. This is interesting and envisaged Dracula as a role for his charismatic boss. Which also answers the question of why we need another adaptation now. This is new ground for a US here. There have been over 200 since 1897 with two London stagings and two films in the last year alone. Haven't they just. But Dracula has always been theatrical, endlessly revivable and a vehicle for a star. And I do quite like this sentence. Bringing her back to the London stage generates a real buzz and reminds us there was always much, much more to her than the green skinned Elphaba. And while there is a general lamenting that she doesn't sing more, which also also happens here, she sings a little powerfully and unaccompanied at the intense and chilling denouement. Her image projected large onto a screen now shaped like a crucifix. A great point that I didn't mention either. Love that. Amid a dazzling blizzard. Brilliant. What a way, what a way to finish. But I like the pointing out that there is much, much more to her than Elphaba because there's also more to her than musical theater. And it's going to be an absolute knockout punch when she next next does a big belting musical. But she is also not Cynthia Erivo from Artset or Mountview. She is Cynthia Erivo from rada. And she is, beneath the vocal prowess, also an astounding dramatic actress. Let's finish then with another two star. This is Alice Saville in the independent. Interesting and different approach to this one. As we begin with the anecdote Victorian author Bram Stoker penned his chilling masterwork Dracula in the gaps between grueling shifts working at the West End's Lyceum Theatre. Hard to imagine that the Lion King currently playing there could inspire the same gothic work today. Or perhaps indeed it can. There's probably not much he'd recognize about this bracingly 21st century take on his tale, staged just a few streets away at the Noel Coward Theatre. But perhaps Stoker would have some respect for how hard its star, Cynthia Erivo, is working as she attempts to embody all 23 characters in this tale while hounded by film cameras, corralled by stage crew and oppressed by blinding white lights. We make it sound like she's not signed a contract and she's not being paid for the ordeal. We can confirm that the film camera, stage crew and white lights etc are happening with consent. Here are the thoughts on the production. Watching this take on Dracula is an odd experience, even if you're used to avant garde theatre's love affair with screens. A lot of the audience, this is an interesting point that hasn't really been discussed elsewhere, will have been lured by the prospect of seeing Erivo in the flesh. They're likely to be disappointed. Weirdly, she's often barely visible as stagehands change her wigs or camera operative wheel round her to get a close up on her worried face. I'm reminded of the thing that I said about like going to see Taylor Swift or a similar recording artist on a stadium tour when you are going to find yourself looking at the screen, if only because it offers you a much better high definition close up view. An interesting overview here though of William's work in the past few London productions. William's methodology in Dorian Gray and its follow up the Maids was all about creating beautiful treacherous surfaces that show us the dangers of an image obsessed society. There's less of an obvious thematic fit between story and approach it. See, I said almost exactly the opposite. Instead, it feels like Williams is mainly interested in excavating the queer metaphor encoded in Stoker's tale. He emphasizes how characters are irresistibly drawn to Dracula even though he'll destroy them. Just as Stoker, widely believed to be a closeted gay or bisexual man, was lured into a intense hero worshipping relationships with men in the homophobic London he lived in. All of which thoroughly interesting and I think, you know the thing that and there were a couple of overt moments but the thing that stopped me really reading this, as a deliberately queer take on the story, was the kind of inherently genderless performance of Cynthia. I think if the whole thing were done with a slightly more deliberate femininity throughout, throughout, which there wasn't much of a sense of, then it might read as Sapphic. But when you have Cynthia playing opposite herself, even as a queer performer, I don't know, I didn't read the most abundant queer energy from those interactions, perhaps because there wasn't all that much romance to them. Alice Savile, though, interpreted it very differently. She said it's refreshing to see Erivo get to own her queerness on stage two, licking her lips the same lasciviously as a lace decked Lucy who's in sexual thrall to an androgynous Dracula, or strutting confidently in a masculine vest with silver chains, a welcome escape from her feminine getups. In Wicked, she unleashes her ethereal voice to haunting vulpine effect in the final scenes where she finally gets to embody Dracula's power on a bare stage unobscured by tech and crowds. It's a glimpse of how much better this show could be if it called on Erivo's formidable vocal power and and charisma instead of testing her memory, which in fairness, almost every critic has agreed on thus far. And I understand that this is a remounting of a prior production. But when you get Cynthia Erivo on board, a part of you has to wonder, should we not put in a song or two? And I know it's a serious theatrical production and not a cabaret performance, but still, as Alice concludes by saying, a solo show should be a chance for an actor to show an audience what they can do and who they are. Williams doesn't always let Erivo do that, and there's some question mark as to whether, you know, she is really trying to fit into a certain preordained mould because this production had already been built in Sydney. Instead, he subjects her to the theatrical equivalent of the beep test, the terror of school PE lessons. I called it the BLEEP test as I was. As I was growing up. Not that it necessarily matters. And I feel like I mentioned that in a review not too long ago. The Hunger Games. I talked about it in the Hunger Games in service of an overly elaborate production that's not satisfying and either as a play or as a film. And that's fair enough, because I think the satisfaction can only actually be found by embracing the hybrid nature of the thing between the two forms. It is neither a particularly brilliant film, nor an entirely functional theatrical piece. But what it is on its own terms, I think is in its own way captivating and emotionally engaging and impressive. I agree very much with the final sentiment here. There's a lethal potent to the moments where she does make this Dracula her own a Nigerian accented, androgynous monster in a blood red wig. Who knows that it's when people love that they're at their most vulnerable. And how I concur and wish that we could have seen a little more of that Dracula. Plenty of thoughts there from a selection of London's theatre critics, interestingly, with an awful lot of overlap even between the most positive and negative responses. Everyone, it seems, is very ready to see Cynthia Erivo singing in a musical musical once more and agrees that this is a very impressive undertaking from her. Some really see the benefit in exploring the Dracula story this way. Others don't find it nearly as purposeful or meaningful as the adaptation of the Picture of Dorian Gray seen a couple of years ago. And what's particularly interesting is that I think for the remainder of this production's run at the Noel Coward Theatre, audiences are going to be just as divided as they seem to have been already. At which point there can be no better time for you to let me know what you have thought of the show in the comments section down below. If you've had the chance to see it, I cannot wait to hear your thoughts. I hope that you've enjoyed this review roundup. Stay tuned for more reviews and theater coverage coming from me in the coming days. Make sure you're subscribed here on YouTube so you don't miss any new videos or following me on podcast platforms. And of course, no matter what you thought of Cynthia Rivo in Dracula, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a safe stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theater. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
- [41:45]
C
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- [42:06]
A
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