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Covered in the novel only by a brief section of the Captain's Log, Dracula's sea voyage to Whitby has attracted a lot of attention from other story tellers over the years - Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffatt devoted a full hour and a half to it in their TV version of Dracula, just to give the most recent example.
Robert Forrest's take on it is inevitably more low-key but certainly compelling, and in no hurry at all to throw the name 'Dracula' around. While fans of the novel will know from the title where this story is going, anybody coming fresh to this play would be likely to be surprised by the late revelation of who it is who is lurking in the ship's hold, picking off the crew. Forrest's record with Radio Gothic speaks for itself - his play The Shroud and his 1993 adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde have already been uploaded on this channel, and they're both recommended listening.
Those well-versed in radio drama might be entertained to hear Finlay Welsh playing the captain of the Demeter here, as he had previously taken the role of Van Helsing in Nick McCarty's 1991 serialisation of Dracula.
Though Voyage of the Demeter wasn't initially broadcast with any 'occasion' in mind, it was scheduled the following year to go out on Halloween...
MYSTERIOUS MAGPIE is a channel devoted to ghost and horror stories on British radio, and to dark tales of every kind. I have another channel, MYSTICAL MAGPIE, which is all about stories of fantasy, mythology, and adventure: / @mysticalmagpie-wo5fn
If you're interested to know more about the century-long history of ghost and horror stories broadcast at Christmas on British television and radio, you might like to check out HOLLY WRAITHS (and its companion volume HOLLY TERRORS), an A-Z guide available in paperback and ebook from Amazon and Lulu.com.
Holly Wraiths on Amazon: www.amazon.co....