EDFRINGE REVIEW: Dracula: Lucy's Dream (Plexus Polaire)

Dracula: Lucy’s Dream – ★★★★☆ – Eerie

Plexus Polaire
6-29 Aug
Review by Rebecca Mahar
 
Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, from French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire and artistic director Yngvild Aspeli, presents an eerie, uncanny, spectacular interpretation of Stoker’s classic horror that focuses on the real, unreal, and beyond.
 
Lucy’s Dream is less a narrative than it is a visual and aural exploration of what might have been happening inside Lucy Westenra during the events of Dracula— advance knowledge of the original narrative certainly makes the story more cohesive. The performance opens with Lucy sleepwalking in the forest, where she is multiplied with mirrors of herself, and encounters a black dog which is always just out of reach. From the darkness Dracula appears, and all three Lucys are drawn into his embrace and fall victim to his bite.

A scene from Dracula: Lucy's Dream. Pic: Christophe Raynaud de Lage.

Lucy and her mirrors are, to this point, played by actors, with the dog and Dracula appearing in the form of life-size puppets. The puppeteers are almost entirely invisible, particularly those controlling Dracula, through a combination of black clothing and ingenious lighting design. This lack of visible puppeteering lends a heightened level of terror to the vampire, a trend that continues throughout the production. As Lucy turns vampire and moves in and out of lucidity, she switches between being represented by an actor and a life-size puppet, and Dracula between the puppet and a masked performer. 
 
The whole of the production is performed by an ensemble of six, an astounding feat. There is no question that this is a world-leading puppetry company, with both the build and the performance of the puppets serving Lucy’s Dreamflawlessly. The visual world of the play is entirely unified, with scenography by Elisabeth Holager Lund, video by David Lejard-Ruffet, costumes by Benjamin Moreau, and lighting design by Emili Nguyen. The duplication of Lucy, the separability of Dracula, and the movement of the abstract video designs lends a tessellating effect across the production which serves to further emphasis the fracturing within Lucy’s psyche.

A scene from Dracula: Lucy's Dream. Pic: Plexus Polaire.

The weakest aspect of Lucy’s Dream is the story itself, and the choices of when and how to use spoken word. The majority of the production is carried out only with music (composed by Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen) to set the mood and provide dramatic underscoring, along with whispers, gasps, and other non-dialogic vocalisations from the company. Apart from brief voiceovers at the beginning and end of the piece, which may be Lucy or may be an amorphous narrator, only Dracula speaks at a few key moments. These spoken moments are jarring in a way that does not compliment the production; stilted and contributing far less than the mesmerising puppetry.
 
Plexus Polaire have produced something extraordinary in Dracula: Lucy’s Dream which encapsulates the terror and the horror of Dracula in ways that are perfectly disturbing, artistically daring, and thoroughly exciting to watch.
 
Running time: One hour with no interval
Venue: Lennox, Pleasance at EICC (Venue 150b), 150 Morrison St EH3 8EE
6-29 August 2026 (no 12, 19, 26)
Time: 5:30pm
Tickets: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/dracula-lucy-s-dream

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