PLAY REVIEW: Dracula ★★★★★

 

Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Dracula at the Lyric Hammersmith is nothing short of a theatrical triumph — a blisteringly bold reimagining that sinks its teeth deep into the myth and draws fresh, potent blood. This is not the Count’s story. It’s Mina’s, Lucy’s, Jo’s — the women pushed to the margins in Stoker’s original, now pulled centre stage with staggering force.

Directed with precision and dark elegance by Emma Baggott, the production is visually breathtaking. Grace Smart’s claustrophobic set and Adam Cork’s haunting sound design conspire to keep the audience gripped in a state of breathless dread. The gothic becomes psychological; the horror, achingly human.

Umi Myers delivers a revelatory performance as Mina — intelligent, aching, formidable — while Mei Mac’s Lucy shimmers with youthful desperation. Every performance is deft, urgent, alive. Yet it’s not just the acting or design that makes this unmissable. It’s the purpose. The play interrogates not just monstrousness, but who gets to define it. The result is both a searing critique of patriarchal storytelling and a love letter to resistance and reinvention.

Dracula at the Lyric doesn’t just update a classic — it upends it, exposing buried voices and letting them howl. Drenched in blood, truth, and theatrical daring, it’s a production that will echo long after the lights go out. Quite simply, one of the most vital pieces of theatre this decade.