As the Fitzrovia Radio Hour prepares for its new adaptation of Dracula, directed by Cal McCrystal at the Mercury Theatre Colchester, one of its writers, Tom Mallaburn, describes how the company uses the vintage radio form to create theatre in 2014...
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In the six and a half years that the Fitzrovia Radio Hour has been around we’ve been confronted with many challenges. Amongst them: how to create the sound of the Eiffel Tower being stolen, how to create the sound of the sound barrier breaking, and how to get from Carnforth to Berwick on a Sunday when the tour van has just broken down on the M6.
But creating a new radio theatre adaptation of Dracula has been our most challenging assignment yet. Normally our shows consist of three or four outlandish stories, interspersed with adverts for fictional products. But with Dracula we simply have that one, very famous, story and a selection of off-mic subplots for the 1930s radio actor characters – some romantic, some violent!
Fortunately the story of Dracula lends itself well to the unpleasant, grotesque sound effects that are a staple of our shows. The sound of dead bodies being staked, or stomachs being ripped out, necks bitten and broken, blood sucked, insects eaten... an orgy of death and destruction just waiting to be turned into a disgusting soundscape. So... for staking, we hammer a small wooden stake into a cabbage; for the ripping of stomachs we manhandle the insides of a melon, for the biting of necks we bite into an apple, for the sucking of blood we suck on a peach, and to eat an insect we eat said peach. Actors tend to have a reputation for eating unhealthily on tour. In our show you are definitely guaranteed your five-a-day.
