Reviews of Dracula starring Cynthia Erivo – Noel Coward Theatre, London

"Cynthia Erivo’s Dracula is an incredible feat of endurance"

"This radical adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 vampire classic raises the stakes for British theatre"

"This hip, radical version plays to her strengths on camera and on stage, using head-turning live-capture wizardry. Incarnating 23 characters in one marathon solo performance, the British actress proves any doubters wrong: this isn’t a flawless night but it’s a tour de force even so."

"Although audiences here may be familiar now with Williams’s groundbreaking form of “cine-theatre”, the wow factor remains."

"Williams’s boundary-breaking artistic toolkit brings out the thematic heart of the matter"

"Is it as frightening or shocking as might be hoped? Pounding heartbeats fill the air but the atmosphere isn’t always pulse-quickening"

"My only cavil is that her rendition can incline to flatness. Still, she’s climbing a mountain, really, and deserves cheering on. It’s feats of stamina like this that keep British theatre un-dead."

"Cynthia Erivo is extraordinary in this one-woman multimedia show"

"Kip Williams’ production at the Noël Coward Theatre is a spectacular star vehicle for Erivo which brings Bram Stoker’s tale right into the horrific present"

"... Cynthia Erivo gives an extraordinary, shape shifting performance in this one-woman multimedia adaptation"

"Her performance triumphantly walks a knife edge between virtuosity and absurdity."

"... this marks a bravura return to the stage for a performer who’s gone from Stockwell to winning a Tony, Emmy and two Grammys... Anyone experiencing Erivo’s Dracula without preconceptions or comparisons will be sucked in."

"It’s to her credit, and Williams’s, that one sometimes loses track of which character is being broadcast live and which is recorded. The integration is mostly seamless."

"Williams accentuates the Victorian novel’s barely-repressed queer subtext and general air of heavy-breathing lasciviousness."

"Williams also foregrounds the idea that Dracula is not an external monster but a manifestation of desire within us all... it makes sense that all the selves and stories flower and flow from the small, slight figure of Erivo, as if from Stoker himself."

"She even sings a little, powerfully and unaccompanied, at the intense and chilling denouement, her image projected large, onto a screen now shaped like a crucifix, amid a dazzling blizzard. Brrrr-illiant."

"Cynthia Erivo ricochets between characters in an outstanding one-woman performance"

"Kip Williams’ fabulously sophisticated cine-theatre adaptation reanimates the gothic story at London’s Noël Coward Theatre"

"Now it’s the turn of Cynthia Erivo to sink her teeth into the myth as she delivers the novel single-handedly in Kip Williams’ fabulously sophisticated cine-theatre adaptation"

"t’s an outstanding performance: Erivo, a tiny, mercurial figure, ricochets between 23 characters including the multiple unreliable narrators of Stoker’s epistolary novel."

"It’s clever, technically. But it’s also an ingenious contemporary response to the themes of death, desire, transgression and identity running through the novel, and to prejudiced attitudes to outsiders."

"On one level, Dracula feels like a stage evocation of the slippery nature of consciousness, folding us in and out of the dark byways of the imagination. Meanwhile, the archly gothic, camp style reacts knowingly to its place in the history of the tale."

"As the plot rumbles on, the text itself becomes a drag and the show begins to feel overlong. It doesn’t match the dazzling immediacy and playfulness of Dorian Gray"

"But then it wows you with a gorgeous image of Erivo, alone in a snowstorm centre stage. Not the best of Williams’s ingenious gothic spectacles, but bloody good all the same."

"Cynthia Erivo sinks her teeth into 23 characters"

"The Wicked star puts on a commanding display in a Kip Williams adaptation of Bram Stoker that is part theatre, part cinema — and, yes, she sings too"

"Now that’s what I call event theatre. Watching Cynthia Erivo in this solo rendition of Bram Stoker’s novel is akin to seeing an ice skater going for gold in the Winter Olympics. Can she pull off one triple Lutz after another without taking a tumble?"

"At the press preview I saw, Erivo fumbled a few lines but otherwise gave a commanding display in a Kip Williams production that is part theatre, part cinema."

"The shallow rake in the stalls makes this theatre a less than ideal setting for Marg Horwell’s handsome scenic design... Yet it becomes a hallucinatory experience all the same."

"I’m not sure it was really necessary for this Dracula to sound as if he’d wandered in from downtown Lagos, but Erivo’s gaunt, androgynous features certainly give her an otherworldly air."

"The format is distracting at first. You can’t help noticing Erivo’s head mic and the edging of her wigs when the cameras catch them in close-up. But then the story, and Clemence Williams’s Romantic score, begin to take hold."

"... the snow falling from above and Erivo’s sudden eruption into an original song add genuine operatic grandeur."

"Superstar Cynthia gets her teeth into wickedly good Dracula"

"Whatever else you can say about Cynthia Erivo in this ultra–high–tech staging of the Dracula legend, she is seldom less than wicked."

"... he is quite simply wicked all the way through this one–woman tour de force. Wicked meaning good. Wicked meaning exciting. And wicked meaning eerily creepy."

"Over a very long and testing two hours and five minutes – unrelieved by the mercy of an interval – she gives an astonishing performance"

"... for me at least, the wheels started to come off when we were introduced to Mina's best friend and her three suitors in Whitby"

"Erivo, however, remains astonishing – despite struggling with Irish and Yorkshire accents"

"Her range is remarkable, too – alternately placid, pert, prowling and predatory."

"For truly this is a mind–bogglingly complex show, which goes beyond the kitchen sink in its attempts to create an audio–visual hallucination. Yet what's missing is old–fashioned suspense."

"But I still find myself tipping my pointy hat to Erivo. Perhaps out of a sense of kinship. After all, we theatre critics are not so far removed from her Count Dracula character: blood–sucking parasites who only come out at night."

"The diminutive ‘Wicked’ star gets lost in auteur director Kip Williams’ techy take on the classic horror novel"

"Dracula offers the Wicked star the chance to show her range: taking on 23 roles in a stage retelling of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel. And let’s be honest, it has the air of awards bait."

"... in Dorian Gray, Snook’s live performance always felt like the main event. In Dracula, Williams’ virtuoso use of film gets in the way."

"The problem with Dracula is that as it wears on, Erivo has to portray multiple characters of roughly the same importance at the same time. Williams’ solution to this is to make heavy use of pre-recorded Erivos.... The thing is, there is far more pre-recording than in Dorian Gray. And these group scenes rarely put the live performance at their centre: quite the opposite"

"Erivo is tiny and the screen is massive, and the pre-recorded stuff is so dominant – as many as four gigantic versions of her on screen versions of her – that it overshadows the technically impressive work happening on stage."

"This all accepted, Williams remains a fantastically exciting director whose bold experiments in mainstream video-driven theatre should be applauded, and do often work fantastically well."

"... there’s lots of great stuff throughout: Erivo is a burningly intense performer who nonetheless has some fun casting sarcastic looks or exaggerated doe eyes at the camera."

"... Erivo is charismatic, game, and essentially does her best as a cog in Williams’ elaborate machine."

"Cynthia Erivo gives the show some much-needed bite"

"Cynthia Erivo is the beating heart of Dracula. Whatever your opinion of the rest of the production, it’s impossible to fault her consummate commitment"

"How wonderful it would have been to see her play Dracula... Instead, she is forced to attempt to lend some bite to Kip Williams’ meandering – and excessively long – adaptation of Bram Stoker’s epistolary novel, which sacrifices her undoubted talent on the altar of superficially exciting theatrical gimmickry."

"Asking one person to play every role, however brilliantly, flattens rather than liberates its story... having Erivo interact with herself inside a red-velvet heart does nothing to illuminate its shock value."

"... Dracula is a novel without one fixed viewpoint – presumably the inspiration for Williams’ idea – and Erivo often ends up playing the least interesting character on stage, while the more interesting action unfolds on film around her."

"It’s slick, soulless and all about appearances. There’s no jeopardy or really any true drama."

"Cynthia Erivo’s magnificent modern bloodsucker is defanged in one-woman show"

'Deploying accents and wigs, the Wicked star takes on all Bram Stoker’s characters, but the atmosphere lacks the fever or diabolicism required"

"Dracula, the Ur-vampire and ultimate outsider of the literary canon, is played by Erivo, along with every other character in this deliciously wicked tale of the blood-sucking count. Except it’s not deliciously wicked in adapter-director Kip Williams’ stage reinvention."

"In look, Erivo makes a magnificent modern Dracula with her piercings and tattoos"

"A team of camera operators transpose what is happening on stage to a gigantic screen.... This use of technology has been utilised innumerable times on the West End stage, by Williams as well as others, but seems ill-suited to the horror genre, distancing us from the dread."

"It shows off what technology can do but the action itself is overwhelmingly static. That is because the story is narrated by Erivo, with only snippets in dialogue, which gives the sense of an audiobook accompanied by screen illustrations."

"... despite the speed, the atmosphere stays sedate, with none of the fever required, and no peril whatsoever. And characters seem so simplistic that they verge on the comical."

"The production seeks to focus on the battle between fear and desire in the story but there is neither chill nor heat here."

"Erivo gives us a tantalising taste of her singing voice towards the end... It’s sad that the production plays so little of Erivo’s strengths, which might better have been reconceived as Dracula the Musical."

"Lacks bite"

"Cynthia Erivo stars in Kip Williams’ disappointingly bloodless take on Bram Stoker"

"What could possibly go wrong? Sadly, the answer is: almost everything."

"There are flickers of what makes all the elements here great: flashes of wit and insight, of an enthralling interaction between the art forms and aesthetics of theatre and cinema. But there’s little here of the layered interplay between real and illusory... the hallmarks of those other Williams productions."

"... Erivo seems ill at ease with the material. There’s a hesitancy about her performance, as if she were wrong-footed by the technology that surrounds her."

"A scattering of arch, self-conscious moments and sly humour are part of the deal in Williams’ interpretation, but nothing feels truly felt and, as she switches between characters, the individual voices are not always properly differentiated."

"The overall effect is slightly ramshackle, sluggish and, in the end, frustratingly short on dash and drama."

"Cynthia Erivo is run ragged in overwrought one-woman show"

"The ‘Wicked’ star does her best but her vocal power and charisma are lost amid tech-heavy staging"

"... perhaps Stoker would have some respect for how hard its star Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) is working, as she attempts to embody all 23 characters in this tale, while hounded by film cameras, corralled by stage crew and oppressed by blinding white lights."

"Director Kip Williams has brought out the same cinematic toolbox he used for sumptuous, Sarah Snook-starring 2024 hit The Picture of Dorian Gray. Alas, this time it feels effortful rather than fluent – and Erivo seems too stressed to offer more than the odd glimpse of Dracula’s coolly gothic allure."

"Watching this take on Dracula is an odd experience, even if you’re used to avant-garde theatre’s love affair with screens."

"A lot of the audience will have been lured by the prospect of seeing Erivo in the flesh. They’re likely to be disappointed. Weirdly, she’s often barely visible as stagehands change her wigs, or camera operatives wheel round her to get a close-up on her worried face."

"There’s less of an obvious thematic fit between story and approach here. Instead, it feels like Williams is mainly interested in excavating the queer metaphor encoded in Stoker’s tale."

"She unleashes her ethereal voice to haunting, vulpine effect in the final scenes, where she finally gets to embody Dracula’s power on a bare stage, unobscured by tech and crowds. It’s a glimpse of how much better this show could be if it called on Erivo’s formidable vocal power and charisma, instead of testing her memory."

"Williams has taken a completist approach to Dracula, cramming in all the novel’s twists and turns even when they don’t add much to the experience."

"A solo show should be a chance for an actor to show an audience what they can do – and who they are. Williams doesn’t always let Erivo do that."