COUNTESS DRACULA Comes to Camden People's Theatre
Performances run from 29 October – 1 November 2025.
OftheJackel have announced that brand new show Countess Dracula, a radical re-interpretation of Bram Stoker’s gothic classic, will premiere at Camden People’s Theatre from 29 October – 1 November 2025.
Performed by Joanna Holden (Told by an Idiot, Cirque du Soleil) and Jack Kelly (Shrimshanks, Withered Optimism) Countess Dracula unfolds as a strange vaudeville double act where the performance never quite ends, and real life never quite begins.
This bold new work uses the figure of the Countess, performed by Joanna Holden (Told by an Idiot, Cirque du Soleil) alongside Jack Kelly, as a theatrical frame through which to explore the lived experience of menopause. At its heart is a woman reckoning with this often unspoken stage of life - confronting its rage, sadness, madness, and humour - while playfully interrogating society’s treatment of ageing women. With echoes of Beckett and end-of-the-pier magic shows, Countess Dracula is part horror, part satire, part love story, and part breakdown.
Through unconventional, playful and visceral theatricality, the production invites audiences into a shifting theatrical world - one of doubt, distortion, and transformation - mirroring the turbulence and metamorphosis of a body and identity in transition. Drawing on the dark allure of the myth of Dracula, the play imagines the Countess reclaiming her waning fire by siphoning the very force of youthful masculinity.
In this vivid retelling, humour and horror collide as the famous myth is reframed as a story of menopause, ageing and transformation - turning one of literature’s most enduring monsters into a powerful metaphor for a stage of life too often shrouded in silence. The show grapples with the lived reality of menopause - a subject that is often met with reticence and medical indifference - provoking questions of what it means to age in a culture obsessed with youth and sees the ageing of women as something to be feared. Devised in collaboration with OftheJackel (Jack Kelly) and Director Deborah Newbold, Countess Dracula is an amalgamation of horror and satire, confronting the taboos of menopause through blood, fury and humour.
In developing the show, the company hosted community workshops with people experiencing menopause. The stories, conversations, and insights shared in these sessions became an integral part of the creative process, ensuring that the production reflects a diversity of lived experiences across bodies, classes, and cultures.
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