Liz Lochhead’s Dracula is not a faithful adaptation; it is an exorcism. Page 33, in particular, reveals the playwright’s central thesis: that Dracula is not a supernatural anomaly, but a logical extension of a society that consumes women’s bodies, blood, and wills. To read Lochhead’s script (available in various academic PDF repositories and print anthologies) is to see the Count not as a monster, but as a mirror. And on page 33, the reflection is terrifyingly clear.

Several recurring themes surface in Lochhead’s treatments. Infection and contagion—central to Stoker’s epidemiological metaphors—become metaphors for social and emotional breakdown in modern communities. Desire is reclaimed as both sustaining and dangerous, with female desire depicted as a force of self-knowledge rather than solely a threat. Community—friendship, domestic kinship, and female networks—emerges as a counter to isolation, offering resilience against both supernatural and social predators.

The Count’s “revenant” is rendered here as “the wraith that rides the night‑wind”, an echo of the old Scots legend of the , the washer‑woman of the river, who foretells death.

: 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’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.

By a night‑watcher of the Glasgow Library