Through September 29
DRACULA: A Comedy of Terrors Andrews Theatre/Irish Classical Theatre Company
If you think about it, “Dracula” is borderline farce.
That’s the mobs with the pitchforks and torches, the forests in Transylvania and that midnight-dark lighting so dear to Hollywood.
At the same time, Bram Stoker’s novel harks back to the legends and whispers about the “undead” and the dirt-filled coffin and the swirling bats.
If you haven’t read the novel, do it.
It’s a great read.
Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen do it differently with “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors.”
As staged by Chris Kelly, the narrow confines of the Andrews Theatre mean this production can be farcical, even in tightly choreographed space.
Think about Irish writer Stoker’s descriptions of Harker (Brendan Didio) on his long horse carriage ride to the castle of Count Dracula, deep in the Transylvanian forest, swirling around the stage.
If you don’t remember, Dracula wants to move to London, requiring buying a place to live in England and moving a coffin filled with the count and the dirt from back home which he needs to survive.
We meet Harker’s fiancé Mina (Daniel Lendzian), her sister and a complicated cast of characters made a little more complicated because all but one performer play multiple roles.
The one exception is Jorge Luna’s Dracula.
He plays it just as weirdly as any of the performers in the role.
It’s all a pretty good show, even if I didn’t love it because this is a little overdone, maybe a lot overdone.
That’s personal and the audience the night I saw “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” liked the show and all of its elements.
Those elements might interest you: the early start of horror entertainment, the cultural items behind the story and the pure illusion of the entire story of vampire and victim, male and female.
A.W.
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