Gareth K Vile writes about Sell A Door Theatre Company's production of Liz Lockhead's Dracula.
Sell A Door Theatre Company, through their tour of Dracula, seem to be intent on proving that Scottish theatre can exist beyond the M8 corridor. Kicking off in Kilmarnock, they are taking their revival of Liz Lockhead’s version around the less fashionable cities, before arriving in London for a pre-Christmas run. Not only is this admirable endeavour supported by a young, energetic cast, it stages a determinedly old-fashioned play that avoids cutting edge tricks for a measured examination of themes and ideas.
Unsurprisingly for Lockhead, her Dracula is fascinated not so much by the dark glamour of the deathless count but the sexual awakenings of the two female heroines, Mina and Lucy. The first act is preoccupied with vignettes of the late nineteenth century’s gender roles, high-lighting the inequalities and stereotyping of male and female social and sexual expectations. Perhaps more surprisingly, Lockhead goes on to advocate a traditional, Christian morality as the only bulwark against the encroaching undead.
While I have no problem with either subject – forgiveness strikes me as an important virtue, and under-valued in our late consumerist society – the context of the play leaves questions about the author’s sincerity. I believe that theatre is a crucial arena for public debate, and agree with the conclusion that it is precisely in forgiveness that human behaviour is most ennobled and breaks the brutal cycle of violence. Yet the use of explicitly Christian imagery – Dracula is initially dispelled by a crucifix – undermines the noble message by connecting the virtues to an increasingly unpopular religion.
In one sense, the details of the vampire myth insist on the Christian symbolism. And it might seem odd to complain that a story that involves the walking dead has a valuable moral message. However, Lockhead’s script skilfully avoids melodrama or kitsch, taking the conflicts between love and lust, science and superstition seriously. The final triumph of good is welcomed by a speech on forgiveness and self-sacrifice: the exoteric display of Christian symbols is replaced by an appeal to its more esoteric teachings.
Unfortunately, if the Dracula myth feels hoky, the Christian elements are equally unfashionable. The men of reason who are derided in the play – Van Helsing is a rare mixture of folk wisdom and science – ultimately won the argument in the twentieth century, and have begun to banish religion to the dark corners of fundamentalism and superstition. The audience is distanced from the serious issues by the story’s fantastic elements, and the script feels irrelevant and conservative. Eroticism, now commonly accepted as a good thing, is returned to the same dark corner.
That said, Dracula is exceptionally well-written: Lockhead is a writer of poetic brilliance, capable of expressing tough ideas without compromising character. It is a brilliant play that revives an exhausted story, and is uncompromising in its moral message. There is something magnificent in an author refusing to abandon ideas that lack contemporary currency: like the mad in the play, she determinedly stands up for a truth, undistracted by social pressure. It is precisely the sort of material that the theatre can contain, and the awkwardness of the details, which lead to the questions about Lockhead’s sincerity, make the final triumph against the forces of evil not so much a celebration as a question to the audience.
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