Review Round-Ups

Monster success or defanged? Critics weigh in on Cynthia Erivo’s Dracula

Kip Williams’ version of Bram Stoker’s classic had its opening last night

Alex Wood

| London |

18 February 2026

cynthia er — Cynthia Erivo, © Daniel Boud

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage

★★★

“How wonderful it would have been to see Cynthia Erivo play Dracula. Or his nemesis, Van Helsing. Or even his prey, Mina. How brilliant it might have been to watch her return to the stage after her world-conquering performance as Elphaba in Wicked in a real play.

“Instead, she is forced to attempt to lend some bite to Kip Williams’ meandering – and excessively long – adaptation of Bram Stoker’s epistolary novel, which sacrifices her undoubted talent on the altar of superficially exciting theatrical gimmickry.”

Clive Davis, The Times

★★★★

“The shallow rake in the stalls makes this theatre a less than ideal setting for Marg Horwell’s handsome scenic design: I spent at least half the evening watching the action on the large screen hanging overhead. Yet it becomes a hallucinatory experience all the same. If you’re a fan of Stoker’s multi-layered mixture of diaries and letters you’ll be relieved to learn that the director treats the book with more respect than he accorded Oscar Wilde’s tale, which he injected with a fatal dose of smirking camp.”

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph

★★★★

“The multi-faceted approach speaks to the way that Stoker cut between first-person perspectives using a document-sharing and epistolary form. Equally, Williams’s boundary-breaking artistic toolkit brings out the thematic heart of the matter; it emphasises the way in which the predatory Count stokes fears but also embodies deep-rooted desires. The bleed between the ‘real’ on stage and the dream-like on screen has its own subconscious power. Erivo’s red-haired Dracula looms large on screen, fangs seductively bared.”

Nick Curtis, The Standard

★★★★

“Shaven-headed, preternaturally physically ripped and androgynous, Erivo’s expressive hands lengthened into talons by nail extensions, the Wicked star juggles costumes and accents, interacting with onscreen versions of herself in a hectic 120-minute canter through the Gothic tale. Her performance triumphantly walks a knife edge between virtuosity and absurdity.”

Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out

★★★

“I refuse to treat Williams’ style like the Emperor’s new clothes. He’s onto something! It just doesn’t entirely work here. Despite stumbling over the odd line, Erivo is charismatic, game, and essentially does her best as a cog in Williams’ elaborate machine. But if you agree to tie your big comeback to a very specific directorial vision, there’s not much even a superstar actor can do if that vision is faulty.”

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian

★★

“A team of camera operators transpose what is happening on stage to a gigantic screen. The live images are merged with pre-recorded footage. This use of technology has been utilised innumerable times on the West End stage, by Williams as well as others, but seems ill-suited to the horror genre, distancing us from the dread.”

“[Erivo] unleashes her ethereal voice to haunting, vulpine effect in the final scenes, where she finally gets to embody Dracula’s power on a bare stage, unobscured by tech and crowds.

“It’s a glimpse of how much better this show could be if it called on Erivo’s formidable vocal power and charisma, instead of testing her memory. Williams has taken a completist approach to Dracula, cramming in all the novel’s twists and turns even when they don’t add much to the experience.”

Sam Marlowe, The Stage

★★

“There’s a nod to more familiar models – brief onscreen appearances of Erivo dressed up like Christopher Lee or Murnau’s Nosferatu – but crucially, the reinvention with which we’re presented isn’t anywhere near as persuasive as those movie antecedents. There’s little force, little fatal allure, to this glamorous predator; the show’s thesis, it emerges, is that there’s something of the bloodsucker in all of us, but the idea feels tacked on in the final minutes.”