The Guardian 8 September 2023

Liz Kettle makes a striking Dracula. Fingers spindly, hair swept back, black cloak voluminous, she possesses the ability to pop up at will on Kenneth MacLeod’s crepuscular set of gantries, ladders and ramps. She radiates power.

Yet in Morna Pearson’s retelling of the Bram Stoker novel for the National Theatre of Scotland and Aberdeen Performing Arts, this vampire exerts most power in his absence. Kettle arrives several scenes into the first act, the slow buildup adding to the mystique, and is quick to retreat into the shadows. As the face of evil, she is unnerving; as the abstract idea of evil, she is more unsettling still. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).