We have a cost of living crisis and a boring election and a summer that keeps stalling and, for all I know, maybe audiences have an appetite for a comedy take on Dracula – a novel famed for not being in the least bit funny. It would be hard to begrudge them such innocent pleasure – especially when it’s performed with the elan of this Octagon/Stephen Joseph theatre co-production. But, really, it is feeble stuff.
Written by John Nicholson and the theatre company Le Navet Bete (aka Al Dunn, Nick Bunt and Matt Freeman), the Bram Stoker reworking follows in the tradition of the Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society, National Theatre of Brent and, latterly, The Play That Goes Wrong. The joke is that Professor Van Helsing (Chris Hannon) wants to tell the true story of the Transylvanian count, not the version pedalled by Stoker – “you are here to be educated not entertained” – and has recruited three hapless actors to play it out with the minimum of artifice.
However, Van Helsing hates theatre and his actors are under-rehearsed. The sound effects go on too long, the props are in the wrong place, the lines get muddled and the furniture breaks.
This kind of material was a hoot on Morecambe and Wise and Acorn Antiques, but only in 10-minute bursts. Much as you admire the energy of Annie Kirkman as a slinky Dracula, Alyce Liburd as a bewildered Mina Murray and Killian Macardle as a love-struck Lucy Westenra – all of them playing multiple roles besides – there are only diminishing returns when the gag is stretched over two-and-a-half hours.
None of the atmosphere or psychological undercurrents of the original survive, and they are surely the only point in telling this story in the first place. The audience gamely chuckle along with Paul Robinson’s production, but it is vacuous; an evening without purpose.
• At Octagon, Bolton, until 29 June. Then at Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough, 3 to 27 July
