It is either brave or it is foolish to attempt to put on such a well-worn classic as Dracula in pursuit of success at the Fringe. In this case, it was the latter. Conserve’s production is no more than an underwritten, underperformed summary of the novel. It does not fail because it is too ambitious for its means, but simply because there is nothing original and nothing exciting on offer.
The very young, presumably inexperienced cast can be partly excused for the play’s lack of direction. The opening introduces the one stand-out performance, Betsy Dallas as psychiatric patient Mr Renfield, whose madness is engaging and conveyed without resorting to cliché. Her character’s relevance to the story, however, is never really explained. The rest of the all-female cast encountered myriad problems: they spent most of the time as far upstage as possible meaning many lines were lost and the audience left cold; those who made themselves heard struggled to make their delivery convincing, either with a lack of appropriate emotion and underdeveloped characterisation or overacted breathiness that sounded like an amateur sight-reading Shakespeare.
Those playing male parts started out with valiant attempts to make themselves more masculine – their ill-fitting shirts and waistcoats a blemish on otherwise decent costumes – but these wore off as the play progressed. Katie Hearsum had some stage presence as Dracula, but she was a long way from having any impact on the audience. This was in part due to the careless scripting and Hearsum’s lack of stage time; at one point, she walks on, bites and walks off again. The lighting, lazy throughout, doesn’t even change here, and the production would surely benefit and gain energy from some music.
Any production of Dracula worth putting on should be at least a little bit scary, and to be worth putting on at the Fringe must be at least a little bit imaginative. This one was neither.
