The rock carved chambers at Banshee Labyrinth are highly appropriate for the annual horror festival but are also arguably among the most testing in Edinburgh for performers, where the combination of (extreme!) background pub noise, very late audience arrivals and tiny cave-like spaces, with minimal tech and set, provide a stern test for their theatrical efforts. However, I’m pleased to report that tonight, Frederick Bang’s sensitively played Jonathan Harker and Magnus Kelly’s towering Dracula manage to pull off an unlikely triumph in the face of such minor issues. Indeed, by the end of the climactic and bloody performance, there seemed to be as many peering in (and cheering!) from the labyrinth corridor beyond as in the room itself!
Produced by Martyr, a Glasgow based theatre company, dedicated to ‘making weird art’, the quality of the performances is testimony to a good eye for detail by director Moira Hamilton and writer Rebecca Russell, and in wringing the absolute most out of the scraps they have been thrown. Any fan of shoestring theatre will revel in the use of the pool table as a central alter, the careful positioning of props on side tables and the wonderful use of candlelight. None more so than in the scene where Harker ventures out, spiralling slowly down into the bowels of the castle until ‘the floor turned to earth’, towards his ultimate gruesome discovery.
Actor Naomi Delvin rounds out the cast list nicely as the resident castle vamp and sometime Mina impersonator, trying to get her fangs into our hero, but thwarted at every turn by the boss.
Harker’s unlikely escape down the cliffs of castle Dracula as portrayed in recent film adaptations is rewritten here into a far more believable and entirely more satisfying bloody ending.
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 1st November 2024
North West End UK Rating:
Running time – 1hr