This page occurs before any on-stage attack. It establishes dramatic irony: the audience knows Dracula watches from the window (noted in earlier stage directions). Thus, when Lucy jokes about becoming “breakfast,” she unknowingly scripts her own fate. Lochhead makes the horror collaborative : female desire for freedom is twisted into an invitation.
: A central motif in the play is the concept that a vampire cannot enter unless they are invited. Lochhead explores the taboos and secret temptations that drive victims to "invite him in". Liz Lochhead Dracula Pdf 33
Liz Lochhead’s engagement with Bram Stoker’s Dracula recasts the Victorian Gothic through contemporary Scottish lenses—language, gender politics, and cultural memory—turning a familiar monster into a vehicle for exploring identity, voice, and social anxieties. This long-form piece examines Lochhead’s adaptation(s), the poetic and dramatic strategies she employs, and the ways her work converses with both Stoker’s novel and late-20th/early-21st-century Scottish literary concerns. This page occurs before any on-stage attack
Unlike the original novel, which relies on a series of letters and diary entries, Lochhead transforms the story into a visceral, psychological stage play. She breathes new life into the characters by exploring themes that Stoker only hinted at. Lochhead makes the horror collaborative : female desire
Purchase the acting edition from Nick Hern Books or your local play supplier. When it arrives, turn to page 33, read it aloud, and understand why Lochhead is considered one of the greatest dramatists of the modern Gothic revival.