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A homage to the world of Theatre, with love, greasepaint and the writing of Dracula
Shadowplay is a wonderful, lyrical novel centred on the life of Bram Stoker. Ah, the famous author of “Dracula” you say, but you’d be wrong. This is Bram Stoker, manager of London's Lyceum Theatre in late Victorian London and not at all famous.
The two stars of the Lyceum were its owner Henry Irving, a vain, demanding martinet and Ellen Terry, witty, seductive and very much in control of her own destiny. The story is a marvellous imagining of this three-sided relationship and switches between the first and third person, using letters and dialogue, to weave a compelling narrative. Anyone who has enjoyed O'Connor's Star of The Sea will find more riches to feast on here. You lose yourself in late 18th Century London, where Oscar Wilde was on trial by day and Jack the Ripper stalked the East End by night.
Here is Ellen Terry describing Henry Irving:
"Make no mistake he was a peerless actor. The greatest I'll ever see. Majestic, powerful, like an animal not a man. You couldn't look away not even for a second. It was as though your neck was in a vice and your eyes on the stage....
Trouble is he adored the applause and that gets in the way. There's a certain sort of actor, a clap-hound I call them, who do anything for the applause, set himself on fire if he needs to. Harry was King of the clap-hounds. He did it too often. It was like watching the world's greatest concert pianist juggling coconuts in a booth on Southend Pier. Fine, so far as it goes. But there's a Steinway behind you darling. Give us a ruddy tune while you're up there."
But what of Dracula? This one book, renowned the world over, is why we know the name Bram Stoker. Joseph O’Conner artfully constructs the narrative of Shadowplay to plot the emergence of the vampire. Bram is not simply a theatre manager but also a frustrated author, forever thwarted by his day job and the imperious demands of his boss. He sneaks away to an attic, haunted by the ghost of a dead servant girl, to write stories, but nothing sells. Yet slowly the seeds of a novel are growing in his subconscious. Throughout Shadowplay, hints of Dracula slowly emerge - a stage painter called Jonathan Harker, a box of earth, the blood and horror of the Ripper, a lunatic asylum where an inmate eats flies, a visit to Whitby.
When Bram Stoker meets Henry Irving for the first time. He says, “I should think it a tremendous honour to sit with you for a while”. “Then do”, Irving says quietly, “I don’t bite”
The genesis of Dracula is the shadowy world of the theatre, a place of drama, emotion, and other worlds, where actors take on disguise, and Shylock, Hamlet and Ophelia never die.
Joseph O’Connor: How Dracula left its mark on the world
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/joseph-o-connor-how-dracula-left-its-mark-on-the-world-1.4057939
Shadowplay is a wonderful, lyrical novel centred on the life of Bram Stoker. Ah, the famous author of “Dracula” you say, but you’d be wrong. This is Bram Stoker, manager of London's Lyceum Theatre in late Victorian London and not at all famous.
The two stars of the Lyceum were its owner Henry Irving, a vain, demanding martinet and Ellen Terry, witty, seductive and very much in control of her own destiny. The story is a marvellous imagining of this three-sided relationship and switches between the first and third person, using letters and dialogue, to weave a compelling narrative. Anyone who has enjoyed O'Connor's Star of The Sea will find more riches to feast on here. You lose yourself in late 18th Century London, where Oscar Wilde was on trial by day and Jack the Ripper stalked the East End by night.
Here is Ellen Terry describing Henry Irving:
"Make no mistake he was a peerless actor. The greatest I'll ever see. Majestic, powerful, like an animal not a man. You couldn't look away not even for a second. It was as though your neck was in a vice and your eyes on the stage....
Trouble is he adored the applause and that gets in the way. There's a certain sort of actor, a clap-hound I call them, who do anything for the applause, set himself on fire if he needs to. Harry was King of the clap-hounds. He did it too often. It was like watching the world's greatest concert pianist juggling coconuts in a booth on Southend Pier. Fine, so far as it goes. But there's a Steinway behind you darling. Give us a ruddy tune while you're up there."
But what of Dracula? This one book, renowned the world over, is why we know the name Bram Stoker. Joseph O’Conner artfully constructs the narrative of Shadowplay to plot the emergence of the vampire. Bram is not simply a theatre manager but also a frustrated author, forever thwarted by his day job and the imperious demands of his boss. He sneaks away to an attic, haunted by the ghost of a dead servant girl, to write stories, but nothing sells. Yet slowly the seeds of a novel are growing in his subconscious. Throughout Shadowplay, hints of Dracula slowly emerge - a stage painter called Jonathan Harker, a box of earth, the blood and horror of the Ripper, a lunatic asylum where an inmate eats flies, a visit to Whitby.
When Bram Stoker meets Henry Irving for the first time. He says, “I should think it a tremendous honour to sit with you for a while”. “Then do”, Irving says quietly, “I don’t bite”
The genesis of Dracula is the shadowy world of the theatre, a place of drama, emotion, and other worlds, where actors take on disguise, and Shylock, Hamlet and Ophelia never die.
Joseph O’Connor: How Dracula left its mark on the world
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/joseph-o-connor-how-dracula-left-its-mark-on-the-world-1.4057939