Presented by Plexus Polaire

Review by Dominic Corr

Lennox Theatre at Pleasance at EICC

I don’t think we’re on Sesame Street anymore, chaps.

Bram Stoker’s gothic behemoth has undergone countless stage reincarnations, but French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire’s Dracula: Lucy’s Dream makes a bold, hyper-focused choice. Rather than attempting to compress the entire novel into an hour, director Yngvild Aspeli hones in on one sensual, devastating fragment: the psychological undoing and physical violation of Lucy Westenra.

Visually, the production is an absolute triumph of shadow, light, and spectral design. Working almost entirely without spoken dialogue, the French-Norwegian company constructs an eerie, refracted landscape where reality and nightmare blur seamlessly. The technical craft on display is breathtaking. Using uncanny, life-sized puppets alongside human performers, the staging plays mind-bending tricks on the eye. Figures float, fracture, and transform into swarming horrors or towering, spindly manifestations of the Count, perfectly tapping into the source material’s deepest gendered anxieties and gothic dread.

A haunting, atmospheric score further elevates the piece, expertly weaponising jarring soundscapes and oppressive silences to keep the audience as disoriented as the protagonist. The puppetry itself becomes a profound metaphor: as the vampire drains Lucy’s vitality, watching a living woman rendered literally inanimate feels deeply unsettling.

If the show falls short of perfection, it is due to narrative pacing. Stretching a singular thematic note across the running time means the middle stretch occasionally runs low on momentum, relying on repetitive visual motifs where a sharper dramatic arc was needed, as impressive as they are. Nevertheless, as a technical masterclass in physical theatre and dark visual alchemy, it remains a captivating outing. Dracula: Lucy’s Dream is a strikingly crafted, chilling nightmare that proves there is still fresh, intoxicating blood to be drawn from classic gothic tales.

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