When history collided with a blistering rock score at Wilton’s Music Hall this Halloween, it wasn’t just a workshop performance we witnessed—it was the seismic birth of a potential cult classic. Stoker Wilde is a brand-new, 90-minute one-act developmental glam rock musical that blows the dust off Victorian literary history to expose the volatile, shared past of Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde. With a book by Eric Rosen and music by Rodney Bush, this production tackles the competitive friction, shared romance, and hidden queer identities that ultimately birthed Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
With two such powerful competing figures on stage, it is Bram Stoker (played with magnificent, shadowed nuance by Connor Carson, who stepped in on short notice) who steals the show from the very start. He is instantly likeable—the kind of vulnerable character everyone falls in love with—as he moves through the shadows and cruising parks late at night. By contrast, Glenn Adamson’s Oscar Wilde initially comes across as intensely unlikeable, a man fiercely on a mission to live out loud in the blinding light.
This stark interplay of light and shadow works beautifully, setting them up rather like the Elphaba and Glinda of late-Victorian literature. At the start, Oscar reads almost like a caricature, dazzling bright like a shooting star destined to be prematurely extinguished. Was the real Wilde truly this exhausting? Why on earth would the reserved Bram have fallen for him? Yet, as the narrative deepens, we watch Oscar unravel and build his own defence, much like a defiant tragic hero, until we genuinely care for him and feel fiercely proud of what he is doing.
To anchor this dazzling contrast, the show leans heavily into Bram’s psychological yearning for a dominant father figure, drawing rich parallels between his real-life idols: the poetic icon Walt Whitman (Matt Rixon) and the theatrical titan Sir Henry Irving (played with panache by David Bedella). This is precisely where Eric Rosen’s book can strengthen its grip. Author and lyricist Rosen actually stumbled onto this entire narrative while developing a project centred on Whitman, discovering a raw, passionate 1872 correspondence written by a young Bram Stoker to his American idol. Rosen remarked in interviews that reading Stoker’s vulnerable, stream-of-consciousness outpouring was a complete revelation, calling it “hands down, the gayest love letter I’ve ever read.” While Wilde’s mother, Lady Jane Wilde, is not yet particularly sketched in, and the indomitable actress Ellen Terry deserves more space to shine, the real opportunity lies in injecting a sharper sense of menace into Irving. Irving shouldn’t just be an eccentric boss; he needs to be a terrifyingly charismatic force.
There is an enormous well of literary allusion to play with here, mirroring Oscar’s descent into his own real-life Dorian Gray nightmare while Bram is pressed like carbon under the weight of his daily duties. We often forget Bram didn’t just write Dracula—he penned 12 other books across his lifetime—but it was that intense pressure that ultimately allowed him to dazzle.
The script’s spoken elements are flat-out hilarious. How could it not be when drawing from such legendary, sharp-witted source material? Yet, the production thrives on structural contrast. The creative choice to run with a loud, aggressive 1970s and 80s glam rock landscape perfectly channels Wilde’s counter-culture charisma. But to reach its full potential, the show could stand to lean into a more lyrical, haunting Irish musicality at the outset. When Christina Bennington’s driven Florence Balcombe first takes the microphone, a bit of that traditional, sweeping acoustic folk texture—evoking the foundational spirit of hits like Once, Hadestown, or Come From Away—would anchor their Dublin student roots beautifully before the guitars blow the roof off. We understand Florence is fiercely driven, but as the men run away to London, she is ultimately relegated to the narrative sidelines. Rather than a neutral observer, she becomes the quiet anchor of traditional respectability—singing from the margins while watching Jemma Geanaus’s formidable, spotlight-stealing Ellen Terry dominate the stage and these two titans collide.
This collision is made all the more striking by the production’s minimalist visual design. Eschewing heavy scenery, director Séimí Campbell keeps the staging wonderfully fluid, with the ensemble traversing the space and rotating chairs to effortlessly track the passing of decades. The naturally distressed, historic architecture of Wilton’s Music Hall provides a perfect, built-in Gothic backdrop. Within this space, Jack Knowles’ masterclass lighting design wraps the stage in moody, ambient shadows, sharply pierced by rock-concert beams that trace the characters’ psychological shifts. Coupled with Kendall Bas Sison’s costume concepts—which brilliantly fuse traditional Victorian lines with sharp, 1970s glam-rock silhouettes—the aesthetic perfectly grounds the show’s bold dual nature.
One of the cleverest historical beats in the show tackles the frantic legal drama behind the masterpiece. Even though Dracula’s arrival is held back as a climactic reveal at the very end of the performance, the production beautifully weights the agonising reality of its birth. Under Victorian British law, publishing a book before staging it meant losing your theatrical rights to any copycat producer. To protect his copyright, Stoker hastily organised a staged reading of Dracula, or The Un-Dead at the Lyceum Theatre on 18 May 1897, just days before the novel hit shelves. It was a gruelling, five-hour morning recitation read straight from pasted-up page proofs. Stoker desperately wanted Irving to play the Count, but when the curtain fell, his idol Henry coldly dismissed the work as “Dreadful!”
What the musical leaves you deeply feeling is the haunting historical irony: Stoker began outlining his immortal vampire story the exact week his contemporary Oscar Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency,” and the novel finally hit the shelves the very week Wilde was released from prison.
Unlike the deeply unsatisfying, fishnet-clad, Rocky Horror-style farce of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Stoker Wilde has real heart, and it hits home. Just as the theatre world is currently enjoying a massive Greek renaissance, it feels like Gothic Horror is demanding its own theatrical moment. From Cynthia Erivo’s hypnotic, boundary-breaking turn as the Count in Kip Williams’s multi-layered Dracula to this brilliant workshop run, the genre is finding a roaring new pulse. This musical is that moment.
As the story hurtles toward a surprise finale featuring Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas (played by Oliver Stockley), you find yourself thinking: Was any of that true?
Dear readers, yes.
The true horror story on display at Wilton’s is the devastating reality of “the love that dare not speak its name.” These were brilliant men who were forced to live in the deep Victorian shadows, criminalised by a society where gross indecency carried sentences of death-inducing hard labour. Yet, out of that crushing pressure came two everlasting masterpieces of Gothic literature.
Did Bram get his final revenge through the immortality of his pen? Stoker Wilde leaves those questions ringing in your ears long after the final chord fades.
What makes this musical truly stop you in your tracks is the originality of its sound. We are so utterly saturated with jukebox musicals these days that when each song starts here, your brain tricks you into thinking, “Oh, I know this track.” But it is entirely original music. It catches you off guard, commands your attention, and refuses to let go.
A great story, brilliantly told – what more can London theatregoers ask for? Watch out, West End. This one is going to run and run.
Behind the Creation
Eric Rosen (Book and Lyrics)
Eric Rosen is an award-winning New York-based playwright, book writer, and director holding a doctorate in performance studies from Northwestern University. He is the co-writer and director of acclaimed musicals like VENICE (named Best Musical of the Year by Time Magazine, with an original cast album on Ghostlight Records and an anime adaptation on YouTube) and CLAY (Lincoln Center Theater, Drama Desk, and Ovation Award nominations). As the founding Artistic Director of Chicago’s About Face Theatre, he developed the Pulitzer Prize-winning I AM MY OWN WIFE. He previously served as the Artistic Director of Kansas City Repertory Theatre (2008–2018) and currently leads the historic Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts.
Rodney Bush (Music and Lyrics)
Rodney Bush is a versatile composer, performer, songwriter, and music director. A finalist for both the Fred Ebb Award and the Jonathan Larson Grant, his composition credits include Whatever You Are, Wholly Chill, The Thirst Trap, and Around the World in 80 Days. He is a founding member and co-songwriter for the glam rock outfit Tony & The Kiki, and works extensively with HBO as a composer and music editor, including campaigns for Industry. Over his career, he has music-directed more than 50 national and international productions, collaborating with top-tier Broadway talent such as Eden Espinosa, Alex Newell, and Eva Noblezada (a supporter of Stoker Wilde).
The Producing Team
The developmental concert sharing is backed by a powerhouse collective of commercial theatre producers, including Jerry Goehring, Andrew House, Chris Landgraff, Eileen Durdek, and Carl Moellenberg. This team brings an extraordinary track record of mainstream success across Broadway and the West End. Led by figures like Tony and Grammy-nominated producer Jerry Goehring (the force behind the global cult-sensation Be More Chill) and prolific multi-Tony Award-winner Carl Moellenberg (producer of theatrical landmarks including Hadestown, Dear Evan Hansen, and the acclaimed revival of Merrily We Roll Along), this collective specialises in championing bold new voices and ushering workshops into commercial theatrical sensations.
PW Productions (General Manager)
Acting as General Manager and Production Accountant for this staging is PW Productions, one of the West End’s most prolific and legendary production houses. Founded in 1983 by Peter Wilson MBE, the company has managed more than 500 productions worldwide. They are famously responsible for the historic tenure of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, Stephen Daldry’s landmark An Inspector Calls, and the international sensation Spirited Away at the London Coliseum.
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