Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Kip Williams bids a spectacular farewell to his tenure at the company with the concluding chapter of his “Gothic Trilogy”, one that began with 2020’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (which collected an Olivier Award during its recent West End run) and continued with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde two years later.

Those earlier shows were considerable – even revolutionary – technical achievements in their compression of the theatrical and filmic experience. This adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula takes Williams’ “cine-theatre” form a step further.

Zahra Newman: Dracula. Photo © Daniel Boud

Zahra Newman takes on all the major characters of the epistolary novel – those you likely remember (lawyer Jonathan Harker and his fiancée Mina Murray; Mina’s best friend Lucy; the vampire-hunter Van Helsing, Count Dracula and his lunatic acolyte Renfield) and some you may have forgotten about, including Lucy’s hapless suitors, John Seward, the American adventurer Quincey Morris and the aristocratic Arthur Holmwood.

Then there are the undead. Dracula’s trio of handmaidens are a hoot; likewise, Newman’s line-up of bloodsucking antecedents – Max Schreck (F.W. Murnau’s indelible 1922 Nosferatu), Christopher Lee...