Dracula rises again: Umi Myers on a new show with its teeth on the pulse

Go back to the book, however, and you find the vampire as a much more frightening figure, a repulsive killer who starts to stalk the streets of London, with his sensuality a form of predatory manipulation, not Byronic glamour. At one stage, Mina is admiring a beautiful girl in a carriage as she takes a stroll with her new husband Jonathan – he has finally returned, weeks after escaping the Count’s castle – when he suddenly starts in fear. She writes, “his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror and half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and black moustache and pointed beard, who was also observing the pretty girl. He was looking at her so hard that he did not see either of us… his face was not a good face. It was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal’s…. The dark man kept his eyes fixed on her, and when the carriage moved up Piccadilly he followed in the same direction.”