Danny Boyle’s National Theatre stage production (2011) starred Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, and was acclaimed for the way the actors alternated the roles of Doctor and Creature. This probably felt like the last avenue of exploration for Shelly’s book. Is there anywhere left to go or anything new to say?

I have always liked Imitating the Dog, who have been making innovative theatre which combines text and movement with seamless, cutting edge film projections (often created with live cameras), since the late 90’s. The creative trio of Pete Brooks, Andrew Quick and Simon Wainwright, seemingly have a shared love of horror, having adapted ‘Dracula’ and ‘Night of the Living Dead’ in the last few years, For this version of ‘Frankenstein’ they have taken a dramatic leap which either works or doesn’t, depending on your point of view.

Here we have a dual narrative, with Shelly’s story becoming a Radio 4 drama. Listening to the audio is a young couple awaiting the birth of their first child. They appear to be confined to their gated high rise, raising the dreaded spectre of lockdown (something which most of us would prefer to forget) but this is never made entirely clear. There’s a subplot involving a homeless man threateningly patrolling the street outside. A clever conceit, given the way rough sleepers are ostracized by society, and a clear parallel with the creature’s lonely journey to find a place in a world which refuses to even look at him. The theme could have been visually reinforced with surveillance footage of the character, frequently discussed but never physically seen.

As they confront their own perfectly valid fears about bringing a child into this messed up world – ‘I worry neither of us will be good enough for this baby’, says the woman – the story of Frankenstein erupts into life around them, as everyday objects are transformed into glaciers, a ship at sea, a laboratory, and a burning house.

Georgia-Mae Myers and Nedum Okonyia are the only two actors on stage, and skillfully transition between both worlds, bringing an impressive physicality to the story of the Doctor and the Creature (choreographer Casper Dillen deserves particular credit for his work here). Audience members who have never seen an Imitating the Dog show will be blown away by the visual style of this production. Images of churning waves appear, followed by tiny frogs emerging from slime; blizzards blow from right to left, and clouds of blood dissolve in amniotic fluid. The video design by Alan Cox and Davi Callanan is superb, as is the lighting by Andrew Crofts.

Shows which are this tech heavy can often consume the emotional content but Myers and Okonyia are skilful enough performers to avoid this pitfall. In fact, it’s surprising how moving this production turns out to be; the final confrontation between Dr Frankenstein, and the Creature, tugs at the heart strings, and underscores one of the themes of Shelly’s book – familial responsibility. Ultimately, this is a show about what it means to be human.

In other words, it’s about all of us.

Frankenstein – Imitating the Dog is at The Lowry, Salford from 12-14 March 2024.

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Imitating the dog and Leeds Playhouse have successfully turned a classic horror story into a gripping, technologically advanced piece of theatre with Dracula: The Untold Story – in a way that somehow seems natural and easy, despite it being clear that it must have taken months of hard work to put this production together.

The story is told through scenes from the present (New Years Eve 1965) and many flashbacks. It features a small cast of Riana Duce, Matt Prendergast and Adela Rajnović with the latter two taking on the roles of police officers, WPC Williams and DS Donaldson.

The officers are questioning Mina Harker – played by Riana Duce – who appeared that night confessing to the murder of a body they recently found and claiming to be Mina, despite not looking like the 90-year-old woman that people would expect from the original story of Dracula.

Riana Duce as the strong-willed yet weary Mina Harker is impeccable, bouncing between elaborate monologues and difficult physical acting with ease. The character starts off as mysterious and elusive and gradually shows that she is clever but also seemingly heartless in what she has had to do to prevent Dracula and his brand of evil from taking over the world. Mina’s difficult story brings about the question of what true evil is and whether good people can do terrible things without also succumbing to evil eventually.

The police officers create a necessary connection to the realistic world for the audience – with humour and dialogue between the two that is reminiscent of modern TV crime dramas (think Law and Order) which neatly contrasts the gothic atmosphere of Mina’s flashbacks.

Impressively, Prendergast and Rajnović also take on other roles in the story with one standout being the way Dracula is cleverly portrayed through shadow play and voice effects from the two cast members and great sound by Rory Howson. The eerie way this is created makes the figure of Dracula more intimidating and hellish than other interpretations have previously.

The incorporation of the graphic novel aspect – with Simon Wainwright on projection and video design – is done seamlessly with the trio of actors moving cameras onstage to capture their faces and placing them in the graphic novel screen in real time while they’re also reciting long monologues – including conversations in many different languages which seems effortless.

Co-directors and writers, Andrew Quick and Peter Brooks clearly did immense amounts of research and it couldn’t be more evident how much time and thought went into this idea.
This is a great new perspective on the story of Dracula, adding a unique and contemporary twist to the production by showcasing the way Mina Harker was treated differently as a woman through the 1900s and using the innovative and effective graphic novel style to present the story.

Dracula: The Untold Story is a thrilling breath of fresh air for a story that has been revived many times before.

Dracula: The Untold Story opens at The Lowry, Salford Quays where it runs for 2 nights from 12-13 November 2021 before touring. The show is also available to watch digitally on demand. Age guidance 14+.

Read our interview with writer and director Andrew Quick.

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Following their unique shot-for-shot stage recreation of George A. Romero’s classic 1968 zombie movie – Night of The Living Dead – Remix, imitating the dog and Leeds Playhouse have joined forces again for a radical adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Dracula: The Untold Story promises audiences a glimpse of the famous vampire as never seen before, retelling the gothic horror as a live action, graphic novel from the point of view of the novel’s heroine, Mina Harker.

Niamh Melody met writer and director, Andrew Quick to find out more:

What inspired you to write and direct a production based on Dracula?

Andrew: “Dracula had been on our radar for a few years, we looked at the film Nosferatu but then we got really intrigued by the novel. The person that intrigued us the most was the figure of Mina Harker as she’s the secret author of the novel, really, within the fiction – on the one hand you have all these men and violence and then you’ve got this clever woman on the other side. We got thinking about whether we trust Mina and what her version of the story is. So we started by looking at the end of the novel and what happened in her life after, through the 1900s, as it’s an era that we’re really interested in”.

Did you feel a sense of responsibility as a male director to portray this female perspective accurately?

Andrew: “Theatre is a collaborative process, so you do share a lot of the development but it was about responsibility in one sense. The story’s been told in so many viewpoints so we looked at a new air we could breathe into it and it felt like Mina’s story post Dracula was really interesting, which meant it wasn’t a difficult narrative to build up. And as it’s told in a graphic novel style there isn’t a huge psychological depth as it’s not that type of show – there is a clear character and a story to be told but she’s also a superhero figure really so in that sense she’s both complicated and easier to write.

“We did feel an ethical imperative to get it right so that she has a resistance and attitude to the male world which feels contemporary. And in the novel the author, Bram Stoker seems to worry about the new woman arriving and he has this fear about what women might become, and our Mina in the 20th century is a more proactive version of that possibility.

“And then of course the actors come in and they reshape it with you so it all comes back to being collaborative. In the end theatre is a thing made with a large group of people all chipping in”.

Dracula: The Untold Story combines live stage with graphic novel. What is it that draws you to writing and directing these types of productions?

Andrew: “It’s very difficult in the contemporary world not to acknowledge that technology is how we shape and engage with other people. So the screen feels like a very present dynamic and the company (imitating the dog) has always been interested in our interactions with technology. Now graphic novels are really interesting because they combine literary, the graphic and the cinematic in its storytelling and we’ve always been interested in the style that it uses.

“Part of this idea actually came out of COVID as we didn’t know how restricted we’d be [by the time rehearsals started] so when we first constructed the idea, the graphic novel panels would be made live on stage by the actors and it meant that we could keep the actors separate.

“In the past Dracula is either this charming seducer or he’s a creature from hell with very little character. And we take the latter on in our show, he’s more of a shadow which suits the graphic novel style where you don’t have the classic psychological realism”.

How was bringing the show to life difficult because of COVID and the situation in the past year?

Andrew: “It was difficult – when we actually started rehearsals properly in June we were losing people everyday to isolation and positive contacts and so on. So we were working with all the restrictions but it was very disruptive and none of us knew how it was going to pan out. But luckily the second rehearsal period was when things were opening up slightly so we pulled it together and made what I think is a really great show. By September I knew that it was going to work”.

What do you think audiences can expect from this production?

Andrew: “We’ve got this phrase ‘We want them to be entertained so that they’ll entertain our ideas’ which I think is a really important idea. First of all we want the audience to be engaged by the story and find the theatrical production exciting. At the same time I hope the audience picks up on the ideas that we circulate in the show, one of which is if you take on evil how can you stop becoming evil yourself and that’s the great conundrum of Mina Harker in this show. Then there’s ideas from that about responsibility and evil and ethics and because these are heavy topics they’re not overtly discussed but they are in the background, so I hope the audience get a sense of that”.

Do you hope that theatre will be appreciated more after the events of the last two years?

Andrew: “I hope so. I think people appreciate a lot more about all aspects of life that they took for granted before. Theatre is all about being in the space with people so I’m hoping that people will come back, and they are so far. One of the things the theatre industry did, is it adapted really well to the pandemic. Companies like ours tried really hard to keep freelancers in employment, and by doing that we developed new forms of performance making, which is exciting. One of the things we need to get used to is the idea that this might happen again, in a different way, so an online presence of theatre is important and theatre people are very capable of adapting to that world and showing that we can make great work in all sorts of different contexts”.

Written and directed by imitating the dog’s co-artistic directors Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, Dracula: The Untold Story will open at The Lowry, Salford Quays where it runs for 2 nights from 12-13 November 2021 before touring. The show is also available to watch digitally on demand. Age guidance 14+.

Read our review of Dracula: The Untold Story at The Lowry.

The post Live action graphic novel brings a new look Dracula to the stage appeared first on Quays Life.

Imitating the Dog’s new touring work – created with the current pandemic scenario in mind – is a short piece that draws on multiple genres and theatre formats, from street theatre and Victorian circus freak shows to modern crime dramas and slasher movies.

This mash-up of genres is reflected in the show’s imaginative design, which literally unfolds from the back of a parked white van – a modern twist on the travelling players. Blinking light bulb strings along the sides of the stage give a run-down carnival feel. The performers slip on and off through white vertical office blinds, which double as screens for impressive AV projections; these elaborate video designs by Simon Wainwright often feature Tarantino-esque levels of bloody violence. Cheap masks, dolls and PVC costumes give proceedings a slightly kinky, freak show vibe.

The story told by Dr Blood and his henchwomen is a vaguely political satire that sees three allegorical figures – “The Mayor” (played by a performer in a Boris Johnson mask), “The Constable” (whose red wig and accent combine – perhaps not deliberately – to resemble Labour’s Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner) and “The Headmaster” (who doesn’t resemble anyone) – plotting to get their mega-casino built on the outskirts of a mythical Northern town and bypass objecting councillors. Once it’s been made clear that these three are violent, lying, heartless crooks, we are able to witness their gruesome unravelling with no sympathy, and it is quite cathartic to see corrupt authority figures get their comeuppance.

Unfortunately, there is far too much going on for a three-hander show that lasts just 30 minutes. Exposition is packed in at the start to establish the characters, but the pacing is slowed by some odd choices; there are songs – one original, one a comedy cover of ‘Lady in Red’ – large chunks of dialogue that are overlong and even some promising moments of action that outstay their welcome, such as the opening montage, which follows one of the narrators as they tear round the town hall in pursuit of some letters.

The three cast members flit between being their narrator characters – mysterious ‘night watchers,’ enactors of justice who only identify themselves as such in the final scene – the allegorical characters of the story and puppeteers, manoeuvring dolls that frequently represent The Mayor, The Constable and The Headmaster. This puppeteering is usually done before cameras positioned at the side of the stage; their live feed appears on screens behind the performers so that characters can have conversations across the two mediums. Like much of the design of the show, it is clever and intriguing, but it’s also often disorientating for the audience.

It can’t be denied that the three performers – Laura Atherton, Keicha Greenidge and Matt Prendergast – give it their all, switching between multiple roles, dancing, singing and selling everything with old-fashioned horror melodrama. But the show itself would benefit from being simplified, perhaps with fewer characters and twists in the plot.

However, it is wonderful to see real, live theatre being done outdoors, socially distanced, in a way that works for and doesn’t compromise the chosen show. The Lowry, Leeds Playhouse and Imitating the Dog all deserve credit for showing how it can be done, and I only hope we can see more.

Dr Blood’s Old Travelling Show from Imitating the Dog was reviewed at The Lowry. The show is currently touring until 24 October 2020 with more dates to be announced. In line with current government guidelines, audiences will have a limited capacity with social distancing in place.

17 Oct – The Lowry, Salford
20-21 Oct – Lancaster Square, Lancaster Arts
23-24 Oct – Belgrade Square, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry

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Just over 50 years on, Night of the Living Dead-Remix takes the original story from the 1968 independent horror movie and gives it a refresh. Thankfully, the nucleus of the original is still there. Barbara and Johnny are attacked by a zombie while on their way to paying respects to their departed father. Barbara makes her way to an ‘abandoned’ house where she meets Ben who is also on the run from the zombie attack. Later they discover that the house is not abandoned, and two more families lie hiding in the basement.

The remainder of the plot centres on the tension that is built between the external threat of the undead; and the clash between Ben and the ‘basement’ survivors: do they lock themselves in the basement and wait it out; or remain upstairs, board the windows and doors and maintain visibility of the threat?

Under the stewardship of its co-directors Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks this stage production differs from the film version because the adaptation is played out on stage before us while at the same time – the original film is run on a screen above the actors.

We’re presented with a ‘u’ shaped stage made of white material panels, used by the cast to exit and enter the stage. The panels also act as projection screens where scenes are amplified, and text is projected as the play progresses. Above the set are two large screens: on the left the original film runs and on the right a live recording play-back of the stage performance. I suspect that this approach would’ve been more impactful had I been part of a live audience at Leed’s Playhouse. The sensation of watching from home took a while to get used to as it wasn’t clear where my eyes should focus at any given time: screen 1, screen 2 or at the stage.

Being made aware of the actor/camera crew permanently on stage caused added confusion. However, after about 45 minutes I grew used to the set-up, focusing on either screen or the stage and only occasionally flitting my eyes elsewhere. And the strong story draws us in and keeps our attention.

Told in real-time without flash backs, the tension builds and alliances switch. The actors deliver stellar performances notwithstanding the warning on the website’s intro notes, that this showing is a compilation of multiple dress rehearsals and therefore sound and continuity issues may be experienced.

Why was this version was called ‘Remixed’, I wondered? In Imitating the Dog’s production Simon Wainwright’s Projection and Video Design provides the answer. He’s cleverly taken Romero’s original and spliced it with the political overtones that were previously only alluded to. Released in 1968 on a shoestring budget and having a black lead protagonist was a ground-breaking step; especially, as America was undergoing a decade of palpable civil unrest (in relation to race, gender and class politics).

Ben’s character is again cast as an intelligent, competent, black male hell bent on survival. However, his existence is given more poignancy when references to key political events in the USA are projected on to the set. These include the assassination of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Also, thrown into the mix is the Vietnam war another key touch point during this period that divided America. As each scene is relayed the score (Composed by James Hamilton) adds currency to the performance.

Throughout this performance the piece’s message of division, separation and isolation are highlighted. Then to counter this the positive speeches of John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King are digitally portrayed as our actors fight for survival. These provide a space for peace, tolerance and understanding.

This performance of Night of the Living Dead – Remixed is both an unapologetic and ambitious retelling of a cult classic. I recommend it and any criticisms I may have raised are the result of my watching a dress rehearsal on-line and are not a critique of the quality of the overall piece. I can’t wait to see this live once we’ve all finished Staying at Home Saving the NHS and Saving Lives.

Imitating the dog and Leeds Playhouse’s online premiere of their shot-for-shot stage recreation of the classic horror film Night of the Living Dead is available for three months from 17 April 2020. Visit www.imitatingthedog.co.uk to view online.

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