“I take no credit for the darkness that lives in the hearts of men!”. Dracula’s admonition to Captain Atkins in Sporadic Productions, Dracula, the Last Voyage of the Demeter.

The Demeter was a Russian sailing vessel responsible for bringing the vampire Count Dracula from his homeland in Wallachia to the seaside town of Whitby in England. The boat maintained a skeleton crew which consisted of just the captain, two officers and five crewmen.

Adapted from ‘The Captain's Log’, a chapter in Bram Stoker's immortal Dracula, Sean Carney, the playwright, has represented his villain as the master manipulator rather than the figure of Gothic horror as we have come to expect.

The performances vary as do the accents. Notable are -  Hugh O’Connor’s perfect Romanian accent as Dracula, Eira Thorstensson’s loyal first mate prepared to do anything for his Captain, Paul Messenger’s tortured Captain of the Demeter torn between his family and his fascination with Dracula, Kahlia Tutty’s stoic Jessica, the Captain’s wife and Alycia Rabig’s Elizabeth, her daughter. The remaining cast,  Danny Sag’s greedy passenger Hopkins, bent on self-preservation and Mike Shaw’s passenger, Gibson, determined to bring Dracula to justice, add  depth to the story.

This production has a suitably bloody conclusion. So, who is the mysterious killer who is murdering the crew? That I will not reveal. I will say I did not pick the killer until the end.

Dracula. The Last Voyage of the Demeter is an interesting take of the Dracula story that pays off in many ways and sure to be of interest to any Bram Stoker aficionado.