Dracula: Lucy's Dream @ Pleasance at EICC
A hypnotising experience, Lucy's Dream centres around the unravelling of Dracula's most overlooked victim
There's few stories more embedded in popular culture than Dracula. References can be found the world over, from ballet to theme parks, and in enough screen adaptations to make Bram Stoker’s original feel almost secondary. So, rather sensibly, French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire's Dracula: Lucy’s Dream doesn’t really attempt to compete with any of them.
Instead, director Yngvild Aspeli strips away the story to its very essence and throws us into Lucy Westenra’s increasingly fractured world, transforming Stoker’s gothic horror into something far more hyper-focused, more direct and even more visceral. The character of Lucy is often reduced to a tragic footnote in Dracula’s story; yet here, she becomes the centre of her own strange, feverish nightmare.
We experience Lucy's perspective switch between what we believe is the real world and her mind. This, coupled with a lack of conventional dialogue, means we experience her story through sensation rather than explanation. At times, she moves through labyrinth-like spaces and dream-like sequences, encountering other versions of herself and Dracula, while her puppet version is pawed at and supported by what we assume are her friends and family. As the lines between the two become more blurred, puppet and human become almost interchangable with each other.
The puppetry is truly masterful, aided by mesmerising use of a combination of light, projections and sound which is an absolute treat for the senses. The techniques employed create a constant sense of unease, punctuated by moments of near-silence that somehow feel even more threatening. Even from afar in the audience, we can feel ourselves breathing with the Lucy puppet, watching her chest heave and fall in between sobs. The longer we watch, the longer time begins to stand still – and we feel trapped and unable to look away, seduced just as Lucy is under Dracula's spell.
This show is undeniably peculiar, occasionally repetitive and not always easy to follow. However, Dracula: Lucy’s Dream isn’t interested in telling us a story we already know – it wants us to experience something entirely new, and it succeeds greatly in that effort.
Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, Pleasance at EICC (Lennox Theatre), until 29 Aug (not 19, 26), 5.30pm, £23