Dracula (stage version) (NHB Modern Plays)

Bram Stoker

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780013428
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Arte dramático

A thrilling adaptation, by acclaimed poet and playwright Liz Lochhead, that stays refreshingly close to Bram Stoker's classic novel.

Asked to adapt it by the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, she immersed herself in the book. 'After a sleepless night, ' she writes in the Introduction, 'my hair was standing on end, what with the mad Renfield in his lunatic asylum eating flies and playing John the Baptist to his coming master' and with Lucy's description of her "dream" of flying with the red-eyed one above the lighthouse at Whitby, and Jonathan's "dream" of the three Vampire Brides' advances upon him and of their being repelled at the last minute by the furious Dracula'

'This was before I'd even got to the abducted children or "the loving hand" of Lucy's fiane staking her through the heart' or that shocking rape-like bit where, with Mina's newly-wed husband Jonathan asleep in a flushed stupor by her side, Dracula, at her throat, takes his fill of her life's-blood'

'Still, what really attracted me to the story was Rule One for becoming a vampire-victim: "First of all you have to invite him in."'

Ideal for schools and drama groups, this Dracula is all the more chilling for the respect it shows for Stoker's original nightmare creation.

Liz Lochhead's version of Dracula premiered at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in March 1985.

'Despite remaining faithful to Bram Stoker's original, Lochhead's version grapples with contemporary preoccupations: gender roles, the horrors of the 20th century, the battles between faith and reason, madness and sanity, democracy and aristocracy... an erudite revisiting of a primal myth' The Stage

ACT ONE

Scene One

Heartwood House, White Bay, Whitby. The garden. Midsummer morning – a beauty, clear, clean and smelling of the sea. The garden is all dappled leafy light and there’s a swing on which LUCY WESTERMAN, out in her underwear, is swinging – with her armful of frou-frou petticoats, mirror in hand, singing her song and dreaming her young-girl dreams.

LUCY (singing).

Who shall I marry

Tom, Dick or Harry?

She kisses her own lovely reflection in the mirror.

Enter MINA WESTERMAN, her big sister, proper English rose, a peach, eating one.

MINA. Catch her death! Lucy, what can you be thinking of?

LUCY. Come lace me up, sis. There’s a love.

MINA. Do hurry up, my angel, he’ll be here soon…

LUCY. Tighter. Tighter, Mina…

MINA. I’ll hurt you.

LUCY. No, you won’t. I want it tighter. I want to feel it nip me in. The day they put me in stays and made me wear my hair up I swore blind if I was to be pinched and skewered then I was to have the thinnest, thinnest waist and the highest, highest hair. I wasn’t going to suffer for nothing and not be noticed. Oh, Mina, aren’t you pretty in your silk? You look good enough to eat.

MINA. Hold still, oh… Lucy, he’ll be here soon!

LUCY. And me not done dolling myself… Maybe I’ll get him to come and catch me.

MINA (distracted). Mmm, pet?

LUCY. I said, meine Wilhel-Mina, maybe I’ll take my time and laze and dawdle and let my curling tongs go quite cold and let him come and gawp at me in my drawers.

MINA. Lucy!

LUCY. Wouldn’t that give him a fright? And a sight to remember. What you going to give him before he goes away?

MINA. Lucy! I don’t know what you mean.

LUCY. Well, he is your fiancé, for goodness’ sake! You are practically married.

MINA. We are not ‘practically married’. It’s weeks and weeks yet till my birthday. He’ll go away. And then he’ll come back. And then we’ll be married.

LUCY. And him going off on such a long journey. What are you going to give him to remember you by?

MINA. My likeness. In a locket.

LUCY. And he’ll keep you in his pocket. Take you out to look at… Nothing else?

MINA. Nothing. Else my mother would turn in her grave! I’m supposed to set you an example. You! What about the example naughty little sisters set sensible big sisters?

LUCY. It’s only tease… only talk.

MINA. Well, you watch your mouth, miss!

By now they’re as buttoned up as each other. MINA begins to fix LUCY’s hair. LUCY sighs.

LUCY. Sometimes I can’t help think…

MINA. What?

LUCY. Nothing…(A sigh.) Just…

MINA. Just what?

LUCY. Just, I wish something was going to happen to me.

MINA. It will. One day.

LUCY. It would be so lovely to go on a honeymoon. Oh, Mina, you’re so lucky. I wish I was waiting for my wedding dress to come from Paris. I wish I had a Jonathan.

MINA. Hands off, miss! He’s mine.

LUCY. He’s Mina’s. Mustn’t forget. Tied and true. And… due here any time!

She begins scurrying about, tidying up and dropping things again.

Behold, the bridegroom cometh! Into the life of lovely Wilhelmina Westerman the twenty-four-year-old heiress and sister to the lynx-eyed Lucy – Enter: Ta-ra! Jonathan Harker, tall, dark, handsome, blue-eyed, articled clerk extraordinaire –

MINA (laughing). Listen, miss, he got his exams. He passed. He’s a solicitor. And you read too many penny dreadfuls!

LUCY. And you know how I like my penny dreadfuls.

MINA. How’s that?

LUCY. Two-pence-coloured!

The girls run off laughing.

Scene Two

Bedlam. Suddenly it’s all grim NURSES with fouled laundry in the asylum.

RENFIELD and DOCTOR ARTHUR SEWARD together. In and out of sight, sometimes, elsewhere from them, DOCTOR GOLDMAN, a lady psychiatrist with notebook, writing. RENFIELD is shaved by a NURSE or ORDERLY. Rocking back and forth, he sometimes catcalls and chants. He is presently gabbling maniacally.

RENFIELD. I once knew a woman who swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die. Perhaps she won’t die. To die or not to die, that is the question. BED-LAM BED-LAM BED-LAM BEDLAM. Bats in the belfry, bats, set of screw-looses… screw Lucy’s screw Lucy’s screw Lucy’s. It’s cold. Getting colder. Time to get yourself into something warm and double-breasted in a whorehouse, my son. I once knew a woman. Who swallowed a… spider that wriggled and tickled and tickled inside her… Doctor Seward! Sewer. Lord Muck-mind. Mr Pissriver. Shit floats! Doctor Seward, you bastard.

SEWARD. Come, Mr Renfield, calm yourself, man. Swallow this opiate, sir, it’ll make you more lucid.

RENFIELD. Lucid. Lucy’d. Lucy’d. She would. She-swallowed-the-cat-to-catch-the-bird-she-swallowed-the-swallow-to-catch-the-spider-she-swallowed-the-spider-to-catch-thefly-but-I-don’t-know-why… (Pause.) Doctor Seward? Doctor Seward, I feel empty.

SEWARD. You’ll feel better, Mr Renfield.

NURSE administers dose. GOLDMAN is in mid-spiel of her deliberations.

GOLDMAN.…One might hypothesise, Silberman says, that the animus in its negative, demonic phase lures women away from all human relationships and especially from all contacts with real men…

RENFIELD (melancholic, pitiful). Empty. They took me and they de-loused me. They shaved me and they salted me with lye. (Angry.) They wormed me like a dog and they wired me up to their bad machines.

SEWARD (amused). Really, Mr Renfield? And what sort of… bad machines?

RENFIELD. They shoved rubber in my gob to stop it, gave me something bitter and sweet to bite on, and they fastened wires to my temples. My whole head is a temple. Full of precious things for my master to come and worship. Because he’s coming in his warship. My-master-that-I-worship-is-coming-in-his-warship. (Pause.) The machine took the current of my memories away. My memories that fed me… and fed from me… and bled me like leeches and drained my life away. Now I’m empty. I feed on no life and no life feeds from me. Buzz of a fly. Louder and louder and RENFIELD’s mad eyes watching it.

GOLDMAN (in mid-spiel again). …correspondingly the malign or ‘shadow’ anima in a man involves him in those neurotic pseudo-intellectual dialogues that inhibit him from getting into direct touch with life so that, starved of spontaneity and outgoing feeling, he cannot live it…

She passes SEWARD, muttering and writing. Exits.

SEWARD (muttering).…Lord, I do sympathise with those who deem it difficult to distinguish the physicians from the afflicted in this institution… Doctor Goldman! Christ, what a crab apple.

SEWARD begins to watch RENFIELD watching the fly. Suddenly RENFIELD snatches it from the air. Buzz stops. He opens his hand a bit. Buzz again. He picks it up, still fizzing between thumb and forefinger and eats it with a sickening crunch. SEWARD shudders.

RENFIELD (defiant). It’s fat with life, strong life, and gives life to me. Very good, very tasty, very wholesome. I know a doctor who should try some.

SEWARD (amused). Ingested insects?

RENFIELD. Some life.

SEWARD. In Mr Renfield’s case I recommend that his medication be continued, increasing by one milligram per ...