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Dracula

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Cynthia Erivo’s Dracula is tiresome

Interest in Dracula seems to go on for ever. Kip Williams has chosen Cynthia Erivo to star in his new version of the yarn about a clique of blood-quaffers who bite their victims’ necks and lick the seepings. The show is staged as a read-through of Bram Stoker’s text supplemented by costumes, wigs and a few orchestral hits recorded on tape. Erivo plays all 23 roles and her performance is simultaneously filmed and broadcast to the audience on TV screens dotted around the theatre. This creates two problems. First, Erivo can’t see or interact with the crowd because she’s encircled by wardrobe assistants and cameramen who swarm around her like

Tuesday

Mark Cocker

Bats have suffered too long from the ‘Dracula effect’

Perhaps it is not surprising that bats, which sleep by day, feed by night and swoop through the darkness as erratically as moths, are among the least understood group of mammals. Yet one of the most poorly appreciated facts about them is their global success. They have a near universal presence across six continents and are amazingly diverse, with 1,500 species, representing almost a quarter of all mammals. We can blame our negative attitude towards them on a certain Victorian novelist. The representative of a British environmental group once recalled how they frequently received questions such as: ‘Do all bats drink blood?’ Here, fortunately, is the book to counter Dracula