Playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm tells The Theatre Playbook about adapting Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, retelling the story from a new perspective and why horror is so “fun.”
During rehearsals for her adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm was working tirelessly to make the production “really scary and spooky and weird.”
Audiences now get to see the results of those efforts – a truly terrifying theatrical experience with plenty of blood, gore and murderous vampires – when the show opens today at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, where it runs until October 11.
“There’s something about doing horror. It’s a genre I think is fun,” she tells The Theatre Playbook. “The lovely thing is you really have to all pitch together and figure it out because sound is so important, lighting is so important. We’ve got two illusionists working with us. We’ve got a fight director working with us. We’ve got a movement director.
“We’ve got so many combined skills to try and figure out how to make this because, to be honest, I’ve thrown down a few gauntlets in in the script. I always like an impossible stage direction, but it’s particularly impossible. But they are rising to the occasion, which is really great. It’s really fun.”
Focusing on the female voices at the heart of Stoker’s novel, Malcolm’s Dracula centres on the character of Mina Harker, the only survivor of the tragic events chronicled in the famous letters.
On stage, Mina recounts her version of Dracula’s journey from Transylvania to London. Alongside trusted allies, and in memory of her beloved friend Lucy, they scramble to piece together the truth of his monstrous desires. But is their performance merely a warning – or does it have the power to conjure the dead?
Directed by Emma Baggott, the cast includes Umi Myers as Mina, Mei Mac as Lucy, Jack Myers as Jonathan, Phoebe Naughton as Van Helsing/Ensemble, Macy Seelochan as Elise/Ensemble and B Terry as Renfield/Ensemble.
As a playwright, Malcolm’s “love and interest” is always to try and find female characters and stories and put them centre stage. As she was rereading Dracula, it became really clear to her that Mina was one such example.
“Mina’s such an important part of the story. She figures out that he’s a vampire. She’s the one that works that out,” she explains. “She’s the one that that summons Van Helsing to come and help them. She’s the one that ends up a vampire because she gets bitten. And she drinks his blood. She has a connection to him. So she’s the one that leads them to him in his castle. She’s really important, but often in adaptation she sometimes gets quite side-lined or turned into the lovely wife who needs saving. It’s that kind of thing that I would push against as an adaptor.”
Mina is now the person telling the story in this new production of Dracula, but Malcolm says it still remains a “traditional” retelling, using the transcripts from Stoker’s novel as evidence to reveal what happened.
“But she’s adding in her own information as well, so there’s a bit of reading between the lines,” she continues. “There’s a bit of poetic licence in there and there’s some fun twisty stuff going on as well. For a purist, I’m hoping it’s going to still hit all the points that they’re hoping for, but there’s an angle to it that’s from her point of view. I’m hoping we’re making it properly scary as well.”
Horror is one of Malcolm’s favourite genres to work in, describing it as “the most theatrical form of theatre” because every person in the creative team must put the audience experience at the front of their minds. In Dracula, she also wanted to “riff” on the idea of fear, what is scary and what is scary now and was back in the Victorian era.
The production places Mina as the narrator, the storyteller, but on stage she’s joined by a group of followers who help her tell the story. “They’re reenacting everything that’s happening for us on the stage. But it’s not quite what it seems and things start to unravel a little bit,” Malcolm says. “I’m not going to say anything more than that, but they’re essentially like a group of players that are travelling the world telling this story as a warning of what’s coming.”
Malcolm’s previous work includes Emilia at The Globe and Belongings and The Wasp, both at Hampstead Theatre. She now also runs theatre company Terrifying Women with Abi Zakarian, Sampira and Amanda Castro, producing horror plays written by women.
She was first commissioned to write Dracula before the Covid pandemic emerged in 2020, with the Lyric Hammersmith immediately on board. But when the UK went into lockdown, the project was paused. Then as theatres reopened, other commitments on both sides meant it then took a little while before Malcolm delivered the script last year.
With any show, Malcolm spends a lot of time thinking, reading and gathering material before she even sits down to start writing. “Then I write in a mad flurry, so I didn’t really start writing it until a couple of years ago,” she says. Then after just a couple of drafts, the Lyric Hammersmith decided to produce it.
For a show that is so theatrically technical, she began talking to director Baggott straight away. The full creative team also includes set & costume designer Grace Smart, lighting designer Joshie Harriette, composer & sound designer Adam Cork, movement director Chi-San Howard, illusion designers John Bulleid & Gareth Kalyan, fight & intimacy director Bethan Clark, voice coach Annemette Verspeak, assistant director Grainne Flynn, casting associate Louisa Smith and casting assistant Joyce Lulendo.
“We’ve all been talking about this for quite a few months now. Emma’s done quite a few meetings, more meetings than you would normally have with your creatives ahead of rehearsals, because we know how technically hard it’s going to be,” Malcolm says. “We’ve not gone high tech digital. We’ve gone with theatrical tricks and all the fun stuff that you get to do with theatre.”
As a writer, “you spend days and days at your desk on your own and in your own little world trying to figure something out, and then suddenly you’ve got all these brains on it and you’ve got all these wonderful ideas. Sometimes when I’ve written something, I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Then they stage it and you’re like, ‘Oh, wow. Ok, that’s way better than I ever imagined it.’”
Her production company Terrifying Women came together during the pandemic and since then, has overseen a number of “very low-fi” monologue performances.
“It’s only ever one person on a stage at the time and that is purely down to budget because we don’t really have any money,” Malcolm says. “We always try and raise enough money so that we pay our performers, our directors and our stage management, but we don’t pay ourselves. We’re just doing it for the love of it really.
“At some point we will organise ourselves enough to actually get some proper funding so we can pay ourselves, which would be really nice and that’s our plan. But we just do it because we really love it.”
The company’s ambition is ultimately focused on “good storytelling” from female writers, with shows usually featuring female performers as well. “We’re trying to make sure we’re telling female point of view stories because there’s not enough of them,” she states. “And there’s something about horror told from a female perspective, about the female experience of the world, that is particularly horrifying.
“It’s also about the love of physically making of the horror. so we’re figuring things out this year. We’re gonna start building towards hopefully getting some proper funding to set up as a company. But at the moment It’s four women who just love horror, and we’re just going to put some shows on, and we’re gonna figure it out. It’s fun.”
With Dracula now arriving at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, Malcolm promises “a classic retold” with all the elements fans of Stoke will expect, with some added twists.
“Hopefully we’re going to scare people,” she says. “Hopefully it’s going to be a bit funny, too. It’s just going to be a really good night. We’ve got incredible actors as well. Just come and see them play because they’re brilliant.”
Dracula is now on at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, with opening night on Wednesday, September 17, until Saturday, October 11. Tickets here.
Top image: Umi Myers in rehearsals for Dracula – Credit Marc Brenner (all images supplied)