Happy birthday to me! I just turned thirty last week and I can’t think of a better present than the fact that my birthday month is the start of Dracula season. Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel begins with an entry from Jonathan Harker’s journal dated May 3. Last year, I wrote about following along with the email newsletter Dracula Daily, which kicked off a fervor for experiencing the story of Dracula in real time through the letters and diary entries that comprise this epistolary tale being sent to you one by one on the corresponding date. If you missed it last time, the Dracula Daily newsletter has just started up again for its third yearly cycle. But this year, there’s yet another way to follow along with the daily adventures of Jonathan Harker and his friends, and this one’s in my favorite format: audio. Re: Dracula is a brand new podcast that turns the letters and diary entries of Stoker’s novel into short audio episodes. As with Dracula Daily, each episode is released on the date that corresponds with the events of the novel.
Re: Dracula is hosted by Acast, and the show is directed by Ella Watts and Hannah Wright. The characters are represented by a full cast of over twenty voice actors, including Karim Kronfli as Dracula, Ben Galpin as Jonathan Harker, and Adomakoh Young as Mina. Fans of The Magnus Archives may also recognize the voice of Jonathan Sims, who here plays the role of asylum doctor John Seward. In addition to this vast array of voice talent, the show also brings the story of Dracula to life through an immersive sound design and musical score. Though this podcast is designed to be a completely faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s text, the sound design leaves room for creative choices to fill in details between the lines. For example, during Harker’s initial coach ride through the Transylvanian countryside, the anxious voices of his traveling companions can be heard in the background urging the driver to go faster in their native languages. Ominous music swelling behind Count Dracula’s speeches also adds to the atmosphere.
Another notable addition to this adaptation is the inclusion of content warnings. Many of the episodes begin with brief, specific notes about the particular contents of that entry that listeners may wish to be aware of. For example, the content warning for the May 5 entry says, “This episode references the racist pseudoscience of craniometry,” while the note for May 8 warns about “racial and ethnic stereotypes.” The website for Re: Dracula also notes that while they strive to create a faithful adaptation, “some derogatory language will be changed, including slurs.” I appreciate this thoughtful and nuanced approach to creating a modern work of art from a much older text. As much as I love Victorian literature, it is important to acknowledge the ways in which many of these writers—and Victorian society at large—were deeply biased and exclusionary, rather than simply sweeping these matters under the rug or mindlessly repeating them in new adaptations.
There are just over half a dozen episodes of Re: Dracula released so far, as of this writing. And as we know from doing Dracula Daily, the pace of the story will ebb and flow, with short entries coming in swift succession at the beginning, then some long pauses, and later—once the action heats up—much longer and dense entries, sometimes featuring narratives from multiple different characters in one day. This irregular schedule may be challenging in the podcast sphere, especially when it comes to the long barren stretches without entries, since most listeners are used to receiving regular episodes. But it looks like Re: Dracula will address this problem by filling the gaps with bonus episodes. One bonus episode, titled “Hot Vampire Hunters in your Area!,” was released back in April as a teaser. In this humorous half-hour improv sketch, two self-deluded vampires try to explain to the interviewer, Hannah Wright, that they are actually vampire hunters living deep, deep undercover. Dracula, or as they call him “Drake,” figures into this story as the weird but seemingly harmless elder in the vampire community they’ve inserted themselves into. The show notes state that we have both serious bonus episodes and more humorous ones like this to look forward to. I’m curious to see what the serious bonus episodes will entail—I’m hoping for some nice, deep discussions of the text!
Re: Dracula has already sunk its fangs into me, and I’m really looking forward to making a yearly tradition out of revisiting Dracula in different mediums and formats. We’re still quite near the beginning, so now is the perfect time to start listening and following along on this daily adventure with me! You can find Re: Dracula on the podcatcher of your choice, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google, or listen to the latest episode online here. If you’ve already started listening, let me know your thoughts in the comments!