This week has been busy for me, and I have a concert this weekend, so this review won’t be that long. That does not mean that I didn’t enjoy this play, or want to analyze it in more depth like I do some productions. It’s just a time issue.
Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors is a sendup of the original novel by Bram Stoker. You can read my thoughts on that from (gulp) more than a decade ago. I’m getting old.
The play is substantially different from the book, but it has enough in common that if you have read the book, the play will make more sense.
The biggest change is in the female characters.
In the original, Jonathan Harker is engaged to Mina. Lucy is Mina’s best friend, not her sister.
In the play, the two are sisters - Lucy is the pretty one, engaged to Jonathan, while Mina is the ugly sister who nobody wants…except Dracula when he is hungry enough. This, combined with the fact that the part of Mina is played in drag, forms the basis of a lot of jokes in the play.
So that bit is vastly different. But a lot of the rest of the plot basically tracks well enough with the book. Harker is a solicitor in the book, a profession which is only partially correspondent to that of lawyer here in the US - so he is changed to a real estate agent in the play. This makes plenty of sense, and changes nothing important. (Legend has it, we lawyers would kill for a fee too, right?)
Harker goes to Transylvania to meet with Dracula about the latter’s purchase of property in London. There, he falls prey to a mysterious illness but escapes back to England. Dracula comes to England on a ship that wrecks, with himself as the only survivor.
Soon thereafter, rumors of a giant bat, and attacks on women start flying. In the book, Lucy is the first major victim, being drained of blood by Dracula. In the play, it is Mina. The famous doctor, Van Helsing, is called in, and determines that there is a vampire on the loose.
In another change from the book, Dr. Van Helsing isn’t Abraham, but Jean. A woman. (Also played in drag by the same actor that plays Mina.) This gives the opportunity for Lucy and Mina’s father, Dr. Westfeldt (a character not in the play, but based on one of Lucy’s suitors in the book, Dr. Seward), to display his sexist assumptions…and eventually fall in love with Van Helsing. (To make things even more interesting, Dr. Westfeldt is also played in drag - so both halves of the eventual couple are gender swapped and in drag.)
From there, the basic process of chasing down Dracula is reasonably similar, minus the flight to Transylvania.
The play is a comedy, as the title indicates, not the more serious, tragic drama of the original book.
And, to be sure, it is thoroughly naughty, taking all of the veiled sexual implications of the original out into the open, both in the dialogue and in the acting.
After all, there is a lot of homoeroticism in the book, a lot of gender bending when it comes to behaviors and expectations, and that whole penetration that leads to a “little death.” Hmm.
These days, we are fairly confident that Bram Stoker was gay, even though he tried to hide it. And there is certainly some evidence that Dracula was modeled on Oscar Wilde - an interesting perspective on who Wilde was.
So, in the play, Dracula clearly has something for Harker as well as for the women. And Harker…has ambivalent sexuality, even if he doesn’t want to admit it until the end.
The play, of course, also explores the same idea as the book, that of female sexuality, and desire that cannot be said out loud.
Overall, the humor is pretty broad in the play, but there are more subtle digs at modern concerns. I already mentioned sexism, and this is a theme throughout. Clearly the smartest people in the play are the women. Lucy (or, in the book, Mina) figures things out well before the men. The female Van Helsing isn’t far behind. But the male characters take a bit longer, to put it mildly.
What made this production so enjoyable was the excellent acting and staging. There were a lot of veteran actors that I always love to watch in this one, including a few throwbacks to when my wife and I were dating and newlyweds and actors who are now fixtures in the drama community were young, raw college students just getting started.
In particular, it was nice to see Jeremiah Heitman back on stage, in the role of Dracula. He is still pretty darn ripped, and made the most of his shirtless scenes. There was no reason to doubt why women - and men - fell for him.
Stealing so many scenes was Jesus Fidel, who you will find behind the scenes at multiple theaters, designing sets, building, working on lights and sound, and really anything needed. But he is darn funny on stage too. (I loved his work in Pride and Prejudice recently.)
In this one, he simpered and pouted and flirted as the poor unattractive and unlucky Mina. And also did the stiff German woman thing as Van Helsing. Often with nothing but a wig change. It was so much fun.
Tessa Ogles, usually playing the romantic lead, took a very different turn, doubling as the stuffy yet innovative Dr. Westfeldt, and as his star mental patient, Renfield. It was great to see her in a totally different role - her comic timing is excellent.
The two straight people - in the theatrical, not the sexual sense - were Lucy and Harker. The ones who seem to be the only sane people in a madhouse. Lucy was played by Avery Gibson, who is reliably excellent in any role. Harker was played by another of my long-time favorites, Alex Mitts. Both of them somehow, beyond all reason, were able to keep straight faces during all the hilarity and madness. And also to bring their own occasional humor to the scene when needed.
Holding down the rest of the parts, from wolves to horses to noblemen were the quartet of Joseph Raner, Dezi Lorelli, David Guillen, and Sophia Bertram. Which meant plenty of costume changes and physical acting.
As I said, it was a lot of fun. We went there on Halloween night, sipped on the signature cocktail, and enjoyed the company of a number of theater friends who had the same idea of fun.
I think this play reminded me a lot of the old location for The Empty Space, and the manic energy that often drove their productions back in the day, when everyone was young and crazy and experimental.
No shade whatsoever on their current location, which is better in so many ways, or on any current productions - they still have the high artistic values combined with modest budgets that makes them one of the best entertainment bargains in town.
But I did enjoy seeing some of that madcap spirit that the old guys and gals from back in the day can still bring.
Unfortunately, this play is over - we saw it closing weekend - but there are others this season that look like a lot of fun.
***
Side note: after reading the book, I ended up discussing it with an acquaintance as part of an online book club she ran. Sometime thereafter, it became apparent she was a white nationalist, and unfriended me when I wrote a post about her idol, self-described “paleo-confederate” Douglas Wilson. A name you might have run across more lately because of his connection to “Whiskey Pete” Kegsbreath and his insistence that women aren’t fully human.
Anyway, as part of that discussion, she literally insisted that there was nothing sexual about Dracula. Which, um…I hate to break it to her. When I recounted this to my 17 year old kid after we saw the play, he snorked pretty hard. He had read the book prior to seeing the play, and even as a teen, he could tell that it was sexual AF.
Perhaps file this in the category of “Growing up in a cult” and “how did my wife and I end up understanding double entendres anyway?”
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