Dracula - The Musical

Dracula, the Musical opens with a young solicitor sent a long way from home to close a property sale for a client who never appears by day. The house belongs to a Count who has been waiting centuries for something, and the solicitor is not going to be allowed to leave.

The Count follows him back, and the story becomes a pursuit: of Mina, the woman the solicitor is engaged to, and of Lucy, her friend, who is taken first. A doctor, a suitor and an old professor of unfashionable subjects assemble against him. What complicates the chase is that Mina is not simply prey. She recognises something in him, and the show takes that recognition seriously.

Frank Wildhorn wrote the score, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, adapting Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. It was first staged in 2001 and reached a commercial run in 2004. A substantially revised version has been performed widely since, and it is that later version most audiences now hear.

The writing is unashamedly romantic. The score is built for big voices and long lines, the horror works by atmosphere rather than gore, and the central relationship plays as tragedy rather than menace. It is a vampire story that spends its energy on longing instead of fright.

Dracula, the Musical is for audiences who like a sweeping score and a gothic story told straight. Anyone who knows the novel will find it familiar in outline and unfamiliar in its sympathies.