The theatre director's copy of a bound typescript of a provincial production of ' "DRACULA" Adapted from Bram Stoker's world famous novel by REED KENT'. With manuscript emendations and additions, including stage plan.

Dimensions 25 x 20 cm: [ii] + 87 pp, all on rectos. Bound in stained yellow wraps, with black tape spine. Well-thumbed, but in fair condition internally, tight, clear and complete. The names of the eight actors are added in pencil in the list of characters. In the first six cases only the christian names are given ('Dracula' is given as 'Alan'), but 'Professor Abraham van Helsing' is played by Andrew Turner, and 'Lucy Westenra' by Jannina Tredwell (who featured in a 1974 revival of the musical 'Hair'). In top right-hand corner of front wrap: 'S.M [presumably the theatre director's initials] | BOGNOR/CLACTON'. Numerous manuscript notes and emendations regarding the directions, in pencil and coloured pens, on both versos and rectos. 12mo leaf with page of manuscript sound directions loosely inserted. Stapled inside the front cover are four 8vo pages of manuscript lighting directions for a performance at Clacton. Stapled inside the back cover are five 8vo pages of manuscript lighting directions for a performance at Bognor. A marvellously melodramatic adapation, with notably lengthy and not always entirely pertinent stage directions, those at the start of the first act beginning: 'The time is a decade or two before the turn of the century when the study of the illness of the mind had a new dimension given to it by the revelations and deliberations of Sigmund Freud.' The character Renfield is described as 'an advanced psychopath with interesting "addenda".' The stage plan (roughly 43 x 56 cm) is titled 'BOGNOR | DRACULA | SCALE 1/2 inch - /FOOT'. Grubby and creased, but clear and complete, it is done in black ink and blue, green and red felt tip pen on graph paper, and carries dimensions and directions for a domestic scene ('brass fender', 'chaise' and 'table desk bureau') with 'coffin' at rear of stage. There is no sign of 'Reed Kent' on the internet, and no record of this or anything else by 'him' on COPAC. This item is consequently a possibly-unique survival: a 1970s interpretation of Bram Stoker's classic, casting light on late twentieth-century practices in the English provincial theatre.