James Gaddas appears to have spent the pandemic lockdown writing and planning a tour based on one of those famous books that we have never read and about one of those characters that has become so stereotypical that we feel we know all about him. Yet Dracula’s image is perhaps more defined by the film treatments starring Bela Lugosi in 1931 and Christopher Lee from 1958 and a host of other adaptations than by a study of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel.
Gaddas’s adaption combines three interlinked stories around the character. First, he borrows heavily from the original novel. Secondly, he imagines that Bram Stoker’ himself stole the story from a real-life tale and changed the names and that this “real” story is recorded in various journals, letters and even a phonogram recording that he has acquired. Then thirdly he imagines he has been hired to voice a documentary for television that explores the background to the stories with “Ron”, the female producer, “Silence” the sound man and “Two meters” the Lighting man who travel together to the Bran castle in Romania. He weaves these stories together into a lecture come dramatisation of the search for Dracula and voices all the characters in the story.
