An interview with Nick Lane, writer of Dracula

Nick Lane adapted Bram Stoker's Dracula for the stage. Previous adaptations include The Valley of Fear, Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde, The Sign Of Four and Jane Eyre.

How do you go about adapting an infamous novel, like Dracula, for the stage?

The story will exist because it’s Dracula. What you want to do is find a way to tell that story individually and also, for me, through sympathy or empathy with the characters.

As an epistolary novel, there is no protagonist. There’s lots of collections of letters, telegrams, mementos and diaries. So at different parts, different characters drive the narrative along. This is the first time I’ve adapted a novel where there’s been multiple figures. 

Everyone reads a book, everyone watches a play, differently. You might watch Breaking Bad, and look at Walter White, and think that is five seasons of the creation of a supervillain - that he’s an absolutely evil man. Or you also might think, ‘Yes, it's machiavellian but at the same time he is trying to protect his family but is taking it to the extreme.’

My version of Dracula is only ever going to be my version. But what I want to be able to do is give enough that we see all angles of each character; not just the good and the bad. 

What was your approach to reimagining the character of Count Dracula in your adaptation of this classic story?

I suppose the main thing I’ve looked at, because Dracula is such a well written and widely written character, there are certain tropes he always has and you can’t get away from that.

I was interested in the British Empire in the 1890s. It was plateaued and at the start of its decline in terms of its position as a global power and a naval power. But we were still doing some very despicable things. 

I was interested in the idea that Dracula might be an admirer of the savagery of the British Empire. When he comes over, he comes to take over as this feels to him as the natural place to be. The ruling classes, they are like vampires anyway. They feed on the working classes; they don’t have a voice.

So there are moments within the text, and obviously Dracula is hundreds and hundreds of years old, but he is clearly aware of history and has studied history. At one point in an early scene, he confronts Harker about the British cutting the thumbs off the weavers, bombing the palace of Zanzibar; all things that happened. 

We can make Dracula the bad guy but then it’s a zero-sum game; we’re all good because he is bad. But actually, I wanted to explore the idea that there is a more complex side to the human struggle against vampyrism, because we aren’t much better in some ways. Really - we’re the same. 

Are there other characters that you found particularly interesting to adapt for a modern audience?

So, let’s take Mina. Mina, who I think is the beating heart of the group. She is the one who pulls together all of the information. In the novel, that is less explicit. Stoker was writing for his audience and that audience was, for the most part, wealthy white men. You didn’t get a lot of intelligent, self-aware female characters in male Victorian literature. 

But Mina, because she transcribes Seward’s notes, Harker’s diaries, she brings it all together and she creates the timeline. She comes up with the idea of hypnosis. She has all of the ideas. Which Van Helsing says is down to her ‘man brain,’ which is hilarious; we won’t be referring to ‘the man brain’ in this version!

I wanted to give a journey to Mina; from innocence to experience and rebellion. Rather than conforming to what Victorian society expects of her.

You mentioned that Dracula is an epistolary novel. How much of that writing style are you able to replicate in your adaptation?

It’s a good question! I’m still working on a cohesive narrative style in the second draft. Initially, I thought I’d try and be clever in that the first part would be a thriller, the second a dance, the third a tragedy, the fourth a black comedy and the fifth an action movie. But there was no narrative throughline - tonally, these switches just didn’t work. 

The first part is largely Jonathan’s diary, and the second act on the Demeter is a dance, and then we get to Mina and Lucy. Currently, Mina narrates, Seward takes over, then the narrative device is dropped, then Holmwood says something - I can’t quite work out whether or not if I drop it completely - what does that mean for the first scene? We’ve set up a convention that we’re then not following. 

I think what I’m going to have to do is find a way for all the actors to become Jonathan’s voice. And then choose Mina or Lucy (Mina being easiest, of course, because she lives) and have the actors become Mina’s voice. So then there is a journey. 

In part four, the actors will become Seward’s voice and in the Fifth… That’s the tough one. In the novel, as it’s a book it can go anywhere, there is lots of travel, lots of disparate elements. Bringing it together on stage, that’s essentially people running on and off with different hats - it’s ludicrous. I haven’t solved it yet, I haven’t solved how I’m going to make that final section sing. 

You talk about the actors taking on one characters’ voice, however in your adaptation all of the actors will play multiple characters. How did you set about deciding which actor’s tracks would take which character?

Each actor has two key roles, and three actors play Count Dracula throughout the play. 

He is played by the actor who plays Van Helsing (the oldest other character). This is the first time we see Count Dracula, he sets the tone. It’s the first time I will be working with a movement director so extensively as we want to be able to create a physical language that the three actors can share so that we always recognise Dracula. 

It’s not Tom Baker turning into a different doctor - they have to be the same. 

It’s an interesting track (Van Helsing / Dracula) because you have two opposing figures. But, they are also both outsiders - Van Helsing is a Dutchman and Dracula is from Transylvania. They are both less invested in Britain. Van Helsing is invested in humanity and life, but he’s not necessarily invested in the empire. Dracula’s investment is more about conquering and having everyone become him. 

Seward, I suppose, is an interesting role for an actor. To be able to play Dracula in his most physical portrayal; in the form of dance and the death of Lucy -  there is less ‘verbal’ and much more ‘physical’ in that journey. Moving from one character who is physically unconfident and nervous into someone who is arguably the apotheosis of physical confidence. That’s a fun contrast.

The third Dracula; the strong, young, virile and dangerous Dracula is played by the actor who plays Arthur Holmwood. Because Arthur doesn’t drive the narrative particularly (he is a part of other people’s journey opposed to a journey in his own right) it seemed much more fun to me to give that actor the meat of the vampire’s conflict with the humans. He gets all the cool scenes!

Harker is the only male actor that doesn’t multirole as Dracula. Harker’s journey is one of realisation; he begins very much as someone who believes that England is the centre of the universe and by the end he is more aware that there is good and bad everywhere - including here. 

For me, it was also interesting to go down a line of women playing some of the male characters and the historical accuracy within that.

Mina plays Hennessey; obviously, in the book, Hennessey is a man. I looked it up, and in 1897 there were fifty female doctors in London and 200 nationwide. So it was very much in its infancy, giving women that sort of power. So these are women of their time but we are able to highlight that they are much more than they are historically perceived to be. 

Then Lucy plays Renfield. I did a lot of reading into what they called “Asylums for Lunatic Women.” The largest of which was a place called Hanwell. As we know, women were treated dreadfully throughout Victorian society. At that time, if women were to answer back, didn’t want to have sex, wanted too much sex, had heavy periods or couldn’t have children - men were able to say “Right, let’s commit them and I’ll start again. I’ll divorce them, I’ll marry again and they can go to an asylum” and all sorts of awful things would happen to those women. 

What are you most excited about taking your adaptation and directing it for the stage?

I’m excited to work with Enric and Tristan on the physical and vocal elements of the project and how these will interweave with the spoken text. We’re looking at Transylanian folk tunes, and creating a vocal soundtrack; so as well as having music, a sound world can take over at certain moments. And the set is terrific, so many different levels and heights. At the moment, I can see little elements of it. ‘That character could appear up here’, or ‘this bit would be terrific here,’ but I haven’t quite consolidated how the set will be best used yet. 

The excitement for me is bringing all of these different ideas together. I want to tell a story where the audience are both getting what they expect and not. It needs to be Dracula, but it needs to be a version of Dracula where they say ‘Oh, I’ve never seen it like that’ or ‘I’ve never thought about it like that before.’ 

The reason for that is twofold; one for the people who aren’t studying Dracula -  if we get it right, it's fresh, it's different and it’s entertaining. And then, for the people who are studying it, it allows for some ‘compare and contrast.’

How do you intend to portray the Victorian era on stage?

Because we’ve only got a cast of six, it's essentially in the body language and the physical relationships between the characters. You suggest the societal relationships between the characters through physicality. There’s no point at which we’ll see urchins running about - I don’t have the cast for that!

I’m centred on story, but I suppose because of the nature of the themes I want to pick out, hopefully you’ll get a sense of what I perceive that world to have been like. That’s different for different characters as well. For someone like Arthur Holmwood; the son of a lord, who is a member of high society and the aristocracy. His relationship is different to someone like Seward; a doctor who is dealing with people who are voiceless.

Dracula plays at the Winding Wheel Theatre from Tue 18 to Wed 19 Mar.

This brilliant, theatrical treatment of Bram Stoker’s adventure blends Victorian Gothic with the Contemporary, showcasing Blackeyed Theatre’s trademark ensemble performance style and featuring a haunting soundscape, powerful performances and innovative design for an exhilarating theatrical experience.