A Year of Gothic - May 2026

If April explored the vampire as a figure of psychological instability and shifting identity, May returned to Dracula in a more recognisable form. Yet even within adaptations that remained closer to Bram Stoker's novel, the Gothic continued to reveal its capacity for reinvention. Across ballet, film and fiction, I found myself less interested in Dracula himself than in the different ways artists chose to reshape his world and those who inhabit it.

May's central production was Dracula by the Ballet International Gala at the London Palladium. Created for a touring company, the staging was necessarily simple, concentrating attention on movement rather than spectacle. Set largely within Dracula's castle and the surrounding village, the production reworked the familiar narrative by drawing both Jonathan Harker and Mina into the Count's sphere of influence. Accompanied by a recorded score of well-known classical pieces, including Danse Macabre and Mendelssohn's Wedding March, the ballet emphasised atmosphere and physical storytelling over narrative detail.

What lingered most strongly, however, was not Dracula himself. The Count was presented as glamorous and seductive, but it was his four brides who dominated the production. Their matching costumes, hair and makeup created an unsettling sense of collective identity, while their movements combined elegance with startling cruelty. When Mina gradually joined their ranks, subtle visual changes marked her transformation. Here, vampirism was not simply a matter of desire but of absorption into a shared and predatory community.

The month's reading offered alternative perspectives on Stoker's legacy. Midnight Tales, edited by Peter Haining, revealed the breadth of Stoker's shorter fiction while also situating the stories within the wider context of his life and career, particularly his work as manager to Henry Irving. Alongside supernatural tales, the collection included lesser-known curiosities, extracts from collaborative works and the original opening chapter of Dracula that was removed before publication. Read together, they reveal a writer whose interests extended far beyond the novel for which he is remembered.

Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Tapes approaches the material from a different direction, retelling the events of Dracula from the Count's perspective. By recasting Dracula as narrator rather than antagonist, the novel transforms certainty into ambiguity. Characters who appear heroic in Stoker's version become less straightforward, while Dracula himself emerges as a figure shaped as much by misunderstanding as by monstrosity.

The films continued this pattern of reinterpretation. Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002) proved particularly memorable, combining the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's performance with the visual language of a silent film. Focusing primarily on Lucy's storyline, it condenses the narrative into a highly stylised seventy-five minutes that feels simultaneously cinematic and theatrical. Northern Ballet's Dracula Live (2019), by contrast, offered a more familiar adaptation, notable for its striking dual portrayal of Dracula as both aged creature and rejuvenated seducer, and for presenting Mina as a more active participant in the story.

The two recent film adaptations demonstrated how difficult it can be to find something genuinely new to say about Dracula. Luc Besson's Dracula (2025) draws heavily on the now familiar connection between Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, popularised by earlier adaptations. Despite competent performances and polished production values, it rarely moves beyond established interpretations. Radu Jude's Dracula (2025) takes the opposite approach, fragmenting the material into an uneven mixture of sketches, advertisements and experiments that often feel disconnected from one another. While its Romanian locations lend it a certain authenticity, the film ultimately struggles to find coherence.

Taken together, these works reinforced an idea that has emerged repeatedly throughout this Gothic year. Dracula endures not because the story itself is endlessly adaptable, but because each generation finds new ways to approach the questions at its centre. Desire, transformation, temptation and power remain remarkably resilient themes. Yet this month suggested that the most compelling adaptations are often those that shift our attention away from Dracula himself and towards the figures who surround him. Whether brides, victims, narrators or rivals, they reveal new possibilities within a story we think we already know.