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'No red liquids inside the house,' says the sign on the bar at this site-specific promenade play – which you'd think would be a bit of a problem for any company looking to stage the vampire story, but makes sense when you remember the venue is a wood-panelled Tudor manor house meticulously looked after by the National Trust. Despite sitting on the traffic-choked A102, Sutton House is pretty much the most atmospheric venue in Hackney, and it turns Tea Break Theatre's 'Dracula' from an entertaining evening to something that's often genuinely chilling.
Whether via Bram Stoker or Francis Ford Coppola, you're probably familiar with the basics of the 'Dracula' story, but Tea Break's time-travelling, site-specific twist (complete with what might be a reference to season five of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer') should ensure that even dedicated gothic-lit fans won't see the ending coming. Showers of insects, sudden blackouts and things going bump in the night notwithstanding, there isn't much to trouble the seriously immersive theatre-phobic: most of the audience gets to stay behind the fourth wall, although my SO did get a one-on-one psychiatric appointment with Dr Seward.
The racier undercurrents of Stoker's original manifest themselves as gender switches and a bit of supernatural homoerotic hanky-panky, and lapses into blank verse, local history and Latin suggest that writer-director Katharine Armitage has done quite a bit of homework. The conclusion is a tad confusing, and an unnecessary interval lets the tension drop a little. But as an enjoyable shlocky Halloween date night with unexpected depth and chill factor, this one's got bite.