An occasional series where I write about works inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula…
These reviews reveal plot twists.
Setting: London, for the most part, but various other places in Europe which will be familiar to readers of Stoker’s novel. The stories take place before, during and after the book, which was (probably) set in 1893.
Faithful to the novel? This audiobook is the work of author Chris McAule, working in partnership with Dacre Stoker, Bram’s great-grandnephew and an expert on his forebear’s life and career. Pitched as being part of the ‘StokerVerse’, it features 10-minute stories that embellish and expand subplots from the text of Dracula or spin off new ideas. We hear from five characters, each featuring in two stories…
* Renfield’s narratives are relayed by Terry Molloy, an actor known for both BBC radio soap The Archers and for playing the evil Davros in Doctor Who in the 1980s. In Bram Stoker’s novel, of course, Renfield is an inmate at Dr Seward’s asylum; a troubled man with an obsession with eating flies who is tricked by Dracula into becoming his ally. Oddly, Voices of Dracula contradicts the novel’s continuity – a strange move which doesn’t really feel like it’s hitting the brief of the project. This Renfield was a partner in a prestigious law firm who was sent by his boss Mr Hawkins to Transylvania to attend to business with Dracula. In the 1897 novel, Stoker never reveals Renfield’s back story, so this narrative is in some ways merging him with the character of Jonathan Harker (various stage and film adaptations have done likewise). However, his experiences have now led to Renfield being committed in Purfleet Asylum for the Insane. There, he has strange dreams, of a house belonging to Westerna family, of finding a tall, pale, regal figure crouching over a woman…
* Claudia Christian, who starred as Susan Ivanova in four seasons of TV sci-fi epic Babylon 5, plays an original character called Thief. Thief is a member of an exclusive guild – this is one of those fictional worlds where thieves band together like a trade union – who is hired to steal something from Carfax, the ruined abbey near the asylum. In the most overtly Gothic story in the collection, the place spooks her – especially a symbol of a snake swallowing its own tale. She also encounters the vampire Dracula, who uses hypnotism to enthral her…
* Elsewhere, Colin Baker – the sixth actor to star as the Doctor in Doctor Who – gives us his Abraham Van Helsing, one of the novel’s major characters who supplies expertise in the occult and vampirism. We learn about the professor’s tragic backstory involving a late wife and a son, and a certain vampire – then later sections of Stoker’s novel are retold from Van Helsing’s point of view. This pair of stories are a good indicator of the split focus going on with Voices of Dracula. On one hand, the audiobook wants to create new material and fill in gaps that Bram Stoker left unattended; but on the other, it seems content with simply trotting out familiar scenes from a slightly different angle.
* Simon Templeman – an animation and videogame voice artist – is Dracula himself and plays the Eastern European vampire cultured, urbane, slow and booming. We learn more about the infamous voyage the Count takes on the ship the Demeter to reach England, and of the character’s time in London, where he is aghast at how some people are treated by society. Then the Count targets two young female friends…
* Actor, singer and impressionist Jessica Martin appears as one of those friends: Mina Harker nee Murray, another key character from Stoker’s text, who on her 45th birthday is looking back at the events of the book. She tells us she’s keeping a diary for the first time, which flatly contradicts Stoker, in which she and many others kept journals. Her stories, which more or less recap events from the novel, use more extreme, visceral language than Bram would have ever risked and there’s a nice use of a heartbeat backing to the scene of Dracula ‘seducing’ Mina.
Best performance: Colin Baker, an experienced audiobook actor, reads his narratives romantically, commits to the wordy language, and uses his own accent rather than the cod Dutch of so many Van Helsings. Of all the five characters, Baker’s is the one who comes alive the most. He had played the role before, in fact: on stage in a 2005 UK tour.
Review: Competent and diverting for the most part, Voices of Dracula falls into the trap of so many projects like this. Essentially ‘fan fiction’ – even if it does involve famous actors and Bram Stoker’s descendent – this audiobook fills in narrative gaps and tells us more information than Bram thought necessary. Some of the new material is fun enough, but in many places you question what it adds. The storytelling often feels like cloth cut to fit a pattern rather than being allowed to go wild.
The sound effects and music are decent, and evoke the foggy, mythical Victoriana that many people imagine when they think of Dracula. There are also a few scattered references to then-topical issues such as Irish Home Rule or Queen Victoria. But this rather misses the point of Bram Stoker’s novel, which was set in an up-to-the-minute, modern 1890s of new technology and societal change.
Six sons named after Johann Strauss out of 10
Ian Farrington 