Dracula: A Radio Drama with Orson Welles

by Original Radio Broadcast, Orson Welles (Narrator), Bram Stoker

This work was first broadcast in 1938 and the premier broadcast by the Mercury Theatre on the Air. Orson Welles, who both stars in and directed the production proclaimed at the time; 'We're starting out tonight with the best story of its kind ever written, you will find it in every representative library of classic English narrative. It is Bram Stoker's "Dracula".' Orson Welles and John Houseman, founder of the Mercury Theatre, believed this to be one of their finet productions ever made, and Welles later remarked to interviewer Peter Bogdanovich; 'I did it on the radio; oh God, it was wonderful! It's the most hair-raising, marvelous book in the world! It's told by four people, and must be done with four narrations, as we did it on the radio.'

Cast:
Orson Welles (Dr. John Seward, Count Dracula),
Elizabeth Fuller (Lucy Westenra).
George Coulouris (Jonathan Harker),
Agnes Moorehead (Mina Harker),
Martin Gabel (Dr. Van Helsing),
Ray Collins (Russian Captain),
Karl Swenson (Mate)

Genres: Horror

Audio CD

First published January 1, 1938

Reviews

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this because of my eternal crush on Orson Welles, but was pleasantly surprised by the adaptation. Dracula is a pretty long book -- most unabridged audiobooks of the full novel are more than 10 hours long -- so successfully adapting it to a 1-hour radio play is pretty impressive. This adaptation makes really great use of the medium, using techniques like incidental music and overlapping dialogue to keep up the pace without losing the emotional impact of the book. It still has to move a lot faster than the book does, especially in the beginning, and you can even hear that the actors are speaking quickly in order to get through the script in time, but it is overall quite enjoyable.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Welles crams in a surprising amount of the original novel’s plot into just 50 minutes but unfortunately this is a story that is seriously too long to be compressed that much lol I kept mixing up the characters and forgetting which segment of the story we were in. Hard to get attached to anyone when the plot is zipping around like this.

Overall this radio drama felt like a perfunctory supercut/summary of an actually-very-good full-cast audiobook.

[Ursula Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a radio drama of the classic story of Dracula. Pats of it were great, the production and cast were wonderful, but it was a bit too rushed. Some parts were difficult to understand. A narrator would’ve made a big difference. It also would’ve been better if it was a bit longer.

[Odd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good performances but the story is a bit too abridged and compressed. Probably due to time constraints of the broadcast but still