You can keep you Bela Lugosis, your Vincent Prices, your Christopher Lees and the all the rest of the vampire actors and would-be Draculas. From now on there is only one Dracula for me.

George Henare, who somehow manages to be believably both dead and undead, gives a brilliant performance that is solid, mysterious, scary, and melodramatic without going over the top. He avoids camp and cheap theatrics as deftly as Dracula avoids garlic, wolfsbane and crucifixes.

It’s the stillness, as well as the slow, silent movements, the carefully timed pauses ("I never drink – wine"), and the dark, glazed eyes that, combined with a costume of Gothic magnificence, make him so impressive.

Downstage’s curious choice for a Christmas spectacular is a 1924 play based on Bram Stoker’s 1887 novel. The rest of the characters are stock theatrical types and have to compete with the reality of this Transylvanian vampire.

Fortunately Cathy Downes has cast this Dracula to the hilt. Jennifer Ludlam scores comic points as Briggs, the housekeeper of the lunatic asylum run by Ken Blackburn’s sober Dr Seward. Danielle Mason is the pretty ingénue, Lucy, while Robert Tripe is a typical juvenile lead as Lucy’s fiancée, and Teodor Surcel goes nicely barmy eating flies as Renfeld, a patient of both Dr Seward and Dr Van Helsing, a Dutchman keenly and energetically played by Steven Ray but without a touch of Holland about him. Sam Downes firmly makes his mark as the mute attendant who has a pet mouse.

The tension-building music, the film noir lighting, the sounds of howling wolves and dogs, as well as bats and vampires flapping through the dank air are all mightily effective, but the setting, which adapts well at the beginning for the coach ride and the storm at sea when Count Dracula travels to England, needs the full Gothic effect; after all it is an old house turned into a sanatorium. What we see looks like an elevator stuck in the middle of the stage with large, heavy rostra for a sweeping staircase.

Still, it’s George Henare’s night and he lifts the creaking, old Gothic melodrama above the commonplace.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Gothic horror for the festive season. Fair enough. An ideal bonding opportunity for office social clubs and other groups or couples seeking a catalyst for their extended ‘good night out’.

In John Parker’s stark, dark and versatile set, this Catherine Downes-directed production of the original stage adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic Victorian novel Dracula (1897) is perfectly pitched for dramatic veracity and emotional truth, with just a hint of tongue in the cheeks of the otherwise straight faced characters.

With some 200 screen adaptations around, umpteen stage spoofs and variations on the vampire theme, the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s version (2000, then revived last year) and Elizabeth Knox’s contemporary vampire novel Daylight (VUP, 2003) keeping the legend alive – or at least undead – it is intriguing to return to the 1927 stage adaptation by Hamilton Deane & John L. Balderson. It differs considerably from the novel, was the basis of the 1931 film starring Bella Lugosi, and may well have been influenced by the rise of psychology as a new science in those intervening years.

I, in turn, may be influenced by the Knox novel (juicy, haunting and tragic in its decadence) in asserting that the real reason the story endures is that, like any classical folk tale, it distils a timeless and universal essence of human experience – in this case addiction and what we now call co-dependency. Anyone who has had to cope with these conditions from within or without, and/or face the rigours of tough love in breaking the destructive cycle, will readily relate to this Dracula. Others will intuitively recognise its truth.

It is also tempting to consider its relevance to the war against terror. While I see no immediate parallel in the plot structures, they do have some things in common: the politics of fear, an enquiry into the nature of ‘evil’, lust for power, ruthless disregard for the well being of others in obsessive pursuit of one’s goals, the capacity of some to be mesmerised by a despot and so succumb to his will, the quest for ‘good’ to prevail …

Of course the historical setting, the distant (for us) locale – after 500 years of being ‘undead’, Dracula meets his doom (or does he?) in an English county – the ramped up spookiness and theatrical contrivances all allow us to simply enjoy the show as ‘pure entertainment’. Phillip Dexter’s selective lighting design complete with lightning flashes, and Thomas Press’s sound design – blending his own impressive compositions with excerpts from Britten, Wagner and Rachmaninoff, and wolf/hound howls, bat-wing flutters and electrical storms – also keep us on the edge of our seats. But for me, it’s that insight into addiction that sucks us in and fully impels – impales? – our empathetic attention.

George Henare’s romantically mysterious Count Dracula – "He’s European, you know" – oozes charismatic charm and portentous tones then wreaks instant terror with his ruthless, self-serving desires. He leads an ideal cast.

As Dracula’s demonic ‘creature’ Renfeld, languishing as a deranged fly-eating patient in Dr Seward’s sanatorium and sincerely seeking salvation, Teodor Surcel enlivens the stage with his deep-felt passions and physical dexterity. (His facility with, and tutoring in, authentic Transylvanian language and accents is also a major plus.)

Ken Blackburn’s Dr Seward hits just the right note of privileged British bewilderment at the increasingly bizarre goings on, acutely counterpointed by Steven Ray’s crusading Dutch scientist, Van Helsing (the role Hamilton Deane took for himself in the original, instead of the Count, because it offered a greater dramatic challenge).

The extraordinary mood-swings of Seward’s daughter Lucy, from near-zombie through hyper-active to sensually ravishing fiancée, are splendidly realised by Danielle Mason, while Robert Tripe makes the most of her gallant but out-of-his-depth fiancé John Harker (no longer the innocent abroad narrator and diarist of the Bram Stoker novel).

With finely-judged understatement Jennifer Ludlam provides welcome comic relief as Briggs, the housekeeping drudge whose increasingly futile quest for a nice cup of tea gives way to something much more sinister when she succumbs to Dracula’s hypnotism … And in a role strangely called just "Attendant", Sam Downes excels as a rat-loving mute who knows more than the others realise.

With Surcel, Mason and Downes in particular – but now I come think of it, throughout the whole cast – there’s a sense their characters imbue their whole bodies and souls: a welcome reach beyond the head and voice acting that constrains so many thespians.

Having thought, I confess, that Dracula would not be to my taste, I’m happy to report I was thoroughly entertained by it, not least because the cast and creative crew resist any temptation to camp it up for cheap laughs: a quality I credit to director Catherine Downes.

What else can I add but, "Suck it and see."

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer