Review: Dracula
[Noël Coward Theatre || February 4th to May 30th 2026]
Two years ago, Kip Williams' one-woman production of The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, in which Sarah Snook played all 26 roles, felt revolutionary. At a time when cameras and video technology were encroaching into theatre in ways that were really beginning to erode the soul of the form, Williams demonstrated how these could instead be used to shift narratives and conversations forwards without sacrificing live theatre's unique essence and energy. Though his production was by its very nature meticulously crafted, it nonetheless still boasted a remarkable fluidity and vibrancy that made it feel as though Snook's interactions and movements around the stage were natural, even spontaneous. The result was a fresh, invigorating take on Wilde’s play that was absolutely rooted in the text but was also playful and risky in a manner befitting both its subject and author.
Enter Dracula, this time starring Cynthia Erivo in all of the roles. Here, Williams' apparent ingenuity seems to have been exposed as mere gimmickry. The same techniques are deployed again - pre-recorded footage of other characters that the one on stage talks to; camerapeople following Erivo around and projecting her face onto a large screen; sets that stagehands construct and dismantle in the background as the star talks to herself - but all of the seamlessness and creativity has been lost. Far from using technology to propel the story forward, Williams now uses the screen as a crutch, reverting to the comfort and reassurance of it whenever an opportunity to experiment or take a risk arises, so that we are left with nothing but tacky transitions and clunky silences to move us from scene to scene.
As a technical feat it is still impressive, of course, and lots of clever audiovisual trickery is used to create various effects that would otherwise be impossible. Alas, it's all mechanical and thudding. The single screen dominates everything, overwhelming Erivo and stripping away all of the emotion and the drama. The technology isn't in the service of the production but vice versa; what few flickers of genuine tension and peril exist are quickly snuffed out by the need for the screen to once again drain our attention like the eponymous ghoul drains the life force of his victims, and it often feels as though what’s happening on stage is an afterthought, with lumpen choreography and a performance from Erivo that is tetchy and overwrought.
Partly as a consequence of the epistolary nature of the novel, much of Dracula unfolds in a series of monologues, with Erivo’s role reduced to a mere narration of events. She does this at a breakneck pace, speaking and emoting erratically as though she too wants the whole thing to be over and done with. She stumbles over her words and is regularly a few seconds out of sync with the pre-recorded dialogue on the screen, resulting in some truly awkward silences as we wait for the production to catch up with her. Accordingly, every interaction feels stilted. There’s little dramatic urgency to any of it because the conversations and the dialogue all feel like the separate, isolated monologues that they are, rather than as part of a tapestry of interconnected ideas and discussions.
Were the show still in previews issues such as these could be forgiven but Dracula has been running for over three months now and so there is no excuse for a show that has been intricately directed and planned down to the exact second to still be so full of gaffes. Likewise, were Erivo able to imbue any of these characters with personality through her performance one might be able to overlook the issues with timing but she is entirely one-note throughout, signalling changes in character solely through the use of a series of increasingly unconvincing European accents (her Irish accent surely constitutes a hate crime) and poorly designed wigs. As such, it becomes impossible to invest in any of it.
Given we know what Williams can do with the right star and vision, Dracula is a honking disappointment. With barely a few weeks left in its run, the show still feels unfinished, and Erivo’s performance is sloppy, even though it’s hard not to be mildly impressed by her stamina. In part, I suspect that the issue is the source material itself - the text doesn’t translate well to the stage, and certainly not in this format - but regardless, there is no excuse for how unimaginative and drab Williams’ production is, nor how wooden Erivo is.
Tickets for Dracula are available here.