‘Dracula’ play – Director Atri Banerjee – “Are we not all vampires?”
National Youth Theatre production is gory and bloody and has echoes of both contemporary productions, ‘Sinners’ and ‘Adolescence’ but remains faithful to the original novel in a first half quite different to its second…
IT’S INCREDIBLE how Victorian novelist Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ (1897) has travelled the world and now arrives in stage form in London and is played by some of the finest young acting talent you’re likely to see, presently.
Performed by the National Youth Theatre (NYT) – whose alumni almost reads almost like a who’s who’s of British stage and screen over the years – this new dramatisation, written imaginatively and powerfully, by NYT writer Tatty Hennessy, is well worth catching but yes, hurry, it ends on Friday (March 13).
The young actors are in very good hands too – as director Atri Banerjee doubles up as the Dramaturg and lends his considerable flair and intelligence to what is an impressive production all around.
What really sticks out is how Hennessy and Banerjee have linked the story’s Victorian origins to modern day contemporary UK society, in two distinct – almost but not quite – separate halves.
Centrally, it asks the question and much easier to identify and understand after you have seen this ‘Dracula’…
“Who are the modern vampires? Are they really monsters? Is there an ethical life even, if you are a vampire?” posed Banerjee to www.asianculturevulture.com when we talked to him. “We all consume resources. We all have mobile phones, we all use the internet.”
Good and evil is not so obviously defined here – and even vampires can have ethics and a conscience – as the second half shows in the contemporary exchanges, between the wheelchair bound and drip dependent Millie (Maya Coates) and sister Lorna (Louise Coggrave) – which form the core of the second half.
It’s an old story and one we all know – but Hennessy and Banerjee inject something critical and urgent to their ‘Dracula’.
“The question wasn’t just, how is it relevant to the audience, but how is it relevant to the young people performing it? They are all in their 20s,” voiced Banerjee.
At the heart of this fiction in prose or on stage – is what is it that represents Dracula and/or his vampires?
“There’s something about the mythology of the vampire that has always been used throughout history and is a surrogate for lots of different things, whether that’s like sexual repression or fear.”
The idea of Vampirism – a sort of blood sucking person, who infects everyone he or she comes across – is not too far from some actual figures of the modern age. One thinks of Jeffrey Epstein…
And Banerjee lent into the notion. “We live in a world which is controlled and dominated by lots of very powerful men and young people feel that.
“I really see Dracula as someone who operates in the shadows and has incredibly powerful connections.
“We wanted Dracula to feel like a force rather than one individual.”
It’s almost like something in the air – no one can actually see it (in the flesh).
That idea comes into its own in the second half – where it is much harder to tell who the vampires are – or who are those, who have become one.
Banerjee reflected: “I think the play is asking how do you carry on living a good, ethical life?
“Just because the powerful men in the world run society, doesn’t mean that we all have to surrender to that.”
The gender roles too are interesting and perhaps the questions lurk beneath the immediate surface in the action – though in the first Victorian half, the men are clearly controlling and have huge agency. One thinks of the doctor (Christopher Lee) treating the young bride (Sasha Jagsi) who appears to be Dracula’s first victim in Whitby in the first half.
Banerjee expanded: “I think there’s also a theme in the play certainly as Tatty’s written it, about gender roles and there are allusions to incel culture (where men despise women but often crave them as sexual objects) and the manosphere (where only men really matter) in the second half, without condemning these young men in this story. It’s become incredibly relevant with shows like ‘Adolescence’.”
After this production, Banerjee will be turning his attention to a more musical version of Shakespeare’s play, ‘A Midsummer’s Night Dream’ for which the music is written by award-winning singer-actor-writer Maimuna Memon and she is doing so for the space – that is The Open Air Theatre at Regent’s Park in London.
In 2022, Banerjee was singled out as one of The Stage’s 25 Theatre Makers to watch (in the coming years) – and he won the iconic publication’s Best Director Debut Award for ‘Hobson’s Choice’ at the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester in 2019 and received a UK Theatre Award nomination for the same show.
A Cambridge University graduate who grew up partly in Italy thanks to his Bengali academia parents, he trained on the National Theatre Director’s Course before joining the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester as a trainee director.
Pictures: All here ©ManuelHarlan
Note about captions: They are simply referred to as ‘NYT Company members performing ‘Dracula’ – we have included names to reflect some of the diversity of the cast of 18.
Listings
‘Dracula’ by Tatty Hennessy, after Bram (Abraham) Stoker’s novel, ‘Dracula’ (1897) at The National Youth Theatre, 443-445 Holloway Road, London N7 6LW ends Friday, March 15
Two shows daily left with one only on Friday (2pm and 7pm)
Further Info/Tickets: https://www.nyt.org.uk/get-tickets/dracula
Atri Banerjee – https://asianculturevulture.com/?s=Atri+Banerjee
