I really had no idea what to expect from Dracula Walks The Night. I must admit the Dark Side’s not really my thing – it’s been a long time since I read The Devil Rides Out under the bed clothes at a rural boarding school by the light of a feeble torch. Now that was scary.
But Don’t Go Into The Cellar managed to send a genuine chill up the spine during their unfolding of a preposterous plot that asked us to believe Dracula had survived Transylvanian immolation and is on a mission to enslave the whole British Royal family as vampires unless Sherlock Holmes can bring him to book.
This delightfully gloomy production, all half-light and shadows, flashed past as a series of gothic horror montages in this Carry On Up The Carpathians style caper.
Author Jonathan Goodwin was splendid as the unbearably smug Sherlock Holmes alternating with a perkily evil Count Dracula. Emma Meddings-Bates was wonderful in the dual roles of nightmare vampiress and blushing ingénue while Alan Wales was his inimitably droll self as the robust baddy Van Helsing and also the instrument of righteous salvation Colonel Moran.
Dracula Walks The Night has delightful production values, but this is to some extent a show in search of an audience.
Owing to the sincerity of its acting which puts the ham firmly back in Hammer Horror and exactly captures the flavour of two tired old genres the whole show is a victim of its own success – it’s really too convincing for parody. It was only towards the end when it became clear that the Duke of Clarence had had a giant chicken grafted onto him (I think) in an unholy surgical operation did the audience feel safe to start laughing.
If it were made clear right from the start this glorious spoof is a send-up, in 25 years time we could well be saying, “They don’t make them like that any more.” It could run forever as a cult celebration of all the tired earnest spine-tinglers ever written, a new Frocky Horror Show.
I wonder if Mr Goodwin feels a song coming on?
