Dracula: The Untold Story at Leeds Playhouse
Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor
Fusing live performance with digital technology, imitating the dog are well known for their experimental storytelling. Building on the company’s acclaimed adaptations of Heart of Darkness and Night of the Living Dead – Remix, this new production builds further on their radical examination of evil in film and literature, and our macabre fascination with horror.
The company will reframe Bram Stoker’s classic horror as a live graphic novel.
In this new production, Dracula: The Untold Story, the company will reframe Bram Stoker’s classic horror as a live graphic novel, offering a unique version of the vampire tale we all thought we knew so well.
Set in London, the story opens on New Year’s Eve in 1965 as a young woman turns herself into Marylebone Police Station and confesses to a brutal murder. The young woman is Mina Harker, the last living survivor of the group who witnessed Dracula’s demise 70 years earlier. However, it is understood that Mina has not been seen since 1901 and the young woman would now be 90 years old, if she was still alive.
In this chilling performance, Bram Stoker’s story is told from the perspective of Mina Harker, the novel’s heroine. And in using their cinematic storytelling techniques and cutting-edge technology, imitating the dog deliver a gothic horror for our time, politically loaded and relevant.
A gothic horror for our time, politically loaded and relevant.
Written and directed by imitating the dog’s co-artistic directors Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, Dracula: The Untold Story receives its premiere at Leeds Playhouse before heading out on a national tour which culminates with a performance at The Lowry, Salford Quays.
Following on from the success of imitating the dog and Leeds Playhouse’s last production together – an adaptation of George A Romero’s classic zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead – we can’t wait to witness another thrilling amalgamation of live theatre and cinema from the pairing.
