A Fresh New Dracula

(Photo credit to Rebecca Gudelunas)

Halloween time is always a fun time for theatre.  There are so many stories out there that can be translated into fun plays.  One of that I’ve actually seen a few times is the story of Dracula.  I think most people know the basic story of Dracula…it’s the very basis of vampire lore, and has spawned vampire tales for over one hundred years.  And come on…who doesn’t love vampires?  I think that vampires also make for very good theatre.  They’re dramatic and bold, and the stories surrounding them are dramatic and bold.  That’s probably why we see a lot of them around Halloween time.

Lucky for us, though…there’s more than one way to do Dracula.  And Curio Theatre Company really decided to just go for it.  This Halloween season, we were lucky enough to see Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors.  Yes, you heard that right.  Curio did a Dracula comedy.  From the moment I read the blurb on the show, I was excited.  I love Dracula and vampires.  I also love seeing classic stories like this made into comedies.  Please give me pop culture jokes, gender bending, and sexy vampires.  This is all my favorite stuff in one.  And Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors really delivered on that.

From the very start, this play gave us brilliance.  We got good humor, and a wonderful Dracula in the form of Matthew Carter.  In my opinion, he gave us exactly what a good Dracula should be…plus a really funny form of the famous character.  I don’t know if I could really take him seriously, and I’m not sure I would really want to.  Honestly, that was everyone I saw up on that stage.  The ensemble was all absolutely hilarious, and they worked super well together.  Watching them together was probably one of my favorite parts of this show.

The cast was young, which was really cool.  Even the older characters were played by young actors.  It’s not necessarily something I expected, but I loved it.  Most of them also played multiple characters, which was done ridiculously seamlessly.  There was one point where Emmie Parker ran all around the theatre to do a quick change, and it was one of the coolest and funniest things I’ve ever seen.  I always think it’s funny when actors play multiple characters, and they all definitely nailed this.  I had so much fun watching them go from character to character, sometimes just by switching out wigs on stage.

As if I couldn’t say enough about the cast, I also have to talk about how well they did together.  All five of them worked together perfectly, and their ensemble work was completely unbelievable.  What they were doing couldn’t have been easy, between acting, physicality, and bringing together an entire comedic show in an hour and a half.  I loved watching this group do something completely amazing.  It’s clear that they love each other very much, and that their trust levels with each other were completely off the charts.  There’s no other possible way they could have accomplished this.

The theater space was very small, but the actors really worked well with it.  The set and costumes were minimalistic, but they really got the point across, and made it easier to concentrate on the actors.  Actors that played multiple characters had defining costume pieces, like wigs and different dresses.  I really loved this combination of things.  It was delightful.  They really made something of what they had to work with, and the actors obviously clearly knew what they were working with.  It was really impressive.

For everything I loved about this play, I think my favorite part was the sexuality involved.  From the start, Dracula was a very sexual character.  He was charismatic and mesmerizing, good looking and enticing.  Even with the comedic aspect of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, we got that aspect of Dracula.  Our Dracula here was sensual, and was so with both men and women characters.  Do I love a queer Dracula?  Hell yes!  Do I love all of the gender bending in this production?  Great goodness do I ever!  Between men playing women, vice versa, and gender queer actors this was something completely new.  It was fantastic.

This show was absolutely fantastic.  It was the humor we need in this world right now, and it was done so well.  Here’s the thing, though…how many people walked away from this play thinking, “I want to know more about Dracula”?  Though they definitely would get something completely different from the original novel, I think it’s cool that stuff like this could inspire people to want to learn more.  Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors did so much for multiple genres, and I think that’s super cool.  And of course, sometimes we just really need a good comedy like that.  So yes, Halloween is all for this sort of thing, but Curio went above and beyond.  This is definitely a show to see and enjoy a good laugh at.