Dracula: Mina's Reckoning review

In this new, National Theatre of Scotland-led adaptation of Bram Stoker’s famed novel, the action is transplanted from the English seaside town of Whitby to a Victorian asylum in Aberdeen. This serves multiple purposes: it’s a hat-tip to producing partners Aberdeen Performing Arts, and a reminder of Stoker’s own connection with Aberdeenshire.

During the 1890s and 1900s, Stoker was a frequent visitor to Cruden Bay on the Aberdeenshire coast, and at least part of his 1897 novel was written there. The imposing castles and stark coastal landscape of the area feasibly provided inspiration for the book’s settings. So this production is no mere excuse to shoehorn in a bit of local interest; it’s a reclamation of a piece of forgotten literary history.

The other distinguishing feature of this new version by Aberdeenshire playwright Morna Pearson (whose style of writing, in authentic but easily comprehensible Doric Scots, is present here) and director and co-creator Sally Cookson is that the cast is entirely female or non-binary. It’s a decision that works well, even with male characters such as the luckless Jonathan Harker (Catriona Faint) or the enigmatic Dracula himself (Liz Kettle, channelling Christopher Lee’s performance as the invasive predator, eyebrow raised in cosmic jest).

The casting also allows Pearson and Cookson to reframe the perceived subtext of Stoker’s novel in relation to sexual desire, transgression and temptation, exploring still-resonant attitudes towards Victorian women. Danielle Jam is an energetic Mina, who seems to be preoccupied less with her betrothed Harker than with her silent and unspeakable passion for Lucy Westenra (Ailsa Davidson), who is entranced and ultimately destroyed by Dracula.

Continues...