Review: Bogan Literature’s Dracula at Royale Theatre

Bogan Literature: Dracula at Royale Theatre
Thursday, September 17, 2026 

The BS Productions team have done it again, turning another classic piece of literature on its head with their distinctive and proudly Westralian sense of humour.  This month, it was the transposition of Dracula from nineteenth-century London to the Wheatbelt of the modern day, and specifically that bustling metropolis called Narrogin.

In front of a near-sellout midweek crowd, the piece began in Transylvania, with Jonathan Harker switched from Victorian-era property lawyer to FIFO-weathered tradie Jono (Dean Lovatt), who has come to give Castle Dracula the reality television renovation treatment. With weird bosses and odd job requests par for the course in his industry, Jono did not bat an eyelid at the various workplace complexities insisted upon before gushing effusively to his new employer about fiancé Mina (Sarah Courtis).

Switched next scene to the Duke of York hotel in Narrogin itself, with Mina and best friend Luke (Dawson Andrew) discussing the dearth of dating options in small country towns—Luke, gender switched from Lucy in the original text, still with the same three suitors from the book, stated he craved danger and excitement in quite the delicious foreshadowing.

What made this adaptation slightly askew to the team’s regular approach was the strong sense that tonight’s script had combined two very distinct stories, each describing the same core events, but in completely different ways. The usual bogan sensibilities, modernisms and pop-culture-adjacent humour that long-time fans would easily recognise were all there, but this time they came with another, perhaps deeper angle: the viewpoint of Dracula himself, with the performance played almost straight this evening as a heroic tragedy.

Whilst Jono, Mina, and the others saw Dracula as a misogynist incel, akin to the Tate brothers, with his powers of persuasion similar to drink-spiking, Dracula himself, played exquisitely by Rhys Hyatt, seemed to have stepped straight into 2026 directly from the Hammer Horror movie sets of last century. Hyatt exuded the aura of a young Christopher Lee, imbuing his character with a grievous degree of melancholy, a lithesome sensuality, and a sparking dash of camp.

Courtis played Mina as Strong Female Protagonist—part Lara Croft, part Alice from the Resident Evil movies, and with all the pissed-off “been hit on all night by creeps when I just wanted a quiet night with the girls” energy all too common across current society. It may have been acting tonight, but the reality and authenticity underneath were made clear in every vowel.

The cursed Demeter made its way from Romania to the Port of Fremantle, the snivelling servant of darkness Renfield (Andrew, again) complaining bitterly about the logistics and quarantine forms that were required to transport Transylvanian soil into Australia. Luke met the danger and excitement he was looking for in an older foreign man, all while a mysterious series of land purchases in town were rumoured to be part of a new commercial development. Van Helsing (Jess Lally) made her very welcome appearance as a “doctor” of wellness, selling vitamin supplements, vegetable smoothies, and healing crystals, with heightened awareness of the supernatural and the undead being merely one of many other side hustles.

From there, the story played out much as canon. Luke died, then rose again, feasting on the young, before Mina and van Helsing finished him off. Jono returned from his extended FIFO swing to add minimal additional firepower to the vampire hunt that the women didn’t already hold, though calling his fists Bram and Stoker was a nice touch. Dracula escaped back to the Old Country, to which our heroes followed, invited into a very welcoming polycule by The Brides one last time, before the final battle.

Other than van Helsing, none of the in-world characters were aware of vampires at all, generally faithfully adapting the source material. In the final fight, however, the real world’s deep and abiding fascination for the genre was allowed to go into full overdrive with maximum force.  Across Hyatt’s near triumphant but ultimately doomed closing monologue, perhaps a dozen references were spat out in thirty seconds, sating the audience’s cravings and daresay bloodlust that had built up across the evening.

These ranged from Buffy through the Count on Sesame Street to What We Do in the Shadows, with the battle itself scored to a cover of Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole, iconic to the baseball scene from Twilight. For the multiple sins of all those watching, space was also found for Morbin Time, from the even more critically maligned Morbius.

It was a lot to take in all at once, leaving some decidedly overstimulated. RIP a prop passed to the front row that took some serious hit point damage before returning to the stage, with the improv lines in that moment, rapid-fire from the cast, leading to some of the biggest laughs of the night.

Dracula was another quality adaptation from this beloved local team, perhaps given more pathos than their previous works by allowing the villain their point of view, albeit one that seemed full of jagged unreliability. The actors and crew now hold a very practised ease when these pieces are brought on stage, which belies the massive effort it must take to deconstruct the original, figure out what to modernise, and put it all back together.

The team are professional, entertaining, and hilarious. Long may they find more classics to absolutely tear into.

PAUL MEEK