![]() So if you’re in the mood for a little seasonal spookiness, by all means check out this “Dracula." But if you plan to sit in the front row, maybe think about wearing a poncho. The fate of Mina, the most innocent figure onstage, is very much left up in the air. Seward is engaged to Lucy Westenra (Gabrielle Hatcher), who becomes a target, then a victim, of Dracula.Īlso drawn into the vampire’s sights are his stiffly formal estate agent, Jonathan Harker (Joseph Jude), whom Dracula plans to task with expanding his territory from Transylvania to a new “hunting ground” in London, and Harker’s pregnant wife, Mina (Lisa San Pascual). George Seward, the head physician of the asylum, though Seward is a caricature of male pomposity, an endlessly mansplaining straw man set up only to be knocked down. But again, “Dracula” doesn’t reach the metaphysical heights it’s straining for.ĭominic Carter does his best with the character of Dr. Played to the hilt by Maria Hendricks in a cowboy hat and sharply pointed sticks strung across her chest like a bandolero, this Van Helsing is intent on rallying the other women to stand up to Dracula and any other male who tries to push them around.Īnother standout is Sara Jones as madwoman Renfield, so fanatically devoted to Dracula that she scrawls “Our Father” in white chalk on the wall of her asylum cell - one of the play’s nods toward religious allegory (Dracula as an uncaring God, indifferent to the worshipers who are literally willing to give their lives to him). Van Helsing, a swaggering, relentless vampire hunter. The Count meets his match in a female (rather than the usual male) Dr. Teuber conjures a suitable combination of charm, menace, and command as Dracula. With blood-curdling screams, pounding noises, and sudden lighting shifts - not to mention that whole neck-biting thing - Aguillon smartly uses the tight confines of the Black Box theater at the Umbrella Arts Center to intensify the atmosphere of dread.Īudience members are grouped on both sides of a gray platform, so near to the action (I was seated just a few feet from the stage) that we get vividly close-up views of the villainous, hungry, or fearful expressions on the faces of the actors. ![]() Still, those points could be made more effectively with characterizations and dialogue that are less on-the-nose, less intent on hitting the audience over the head, than we too often find in this “Dracula.”Īs usual with Hamill, an actress who made her name as a dramatist with theatrical adaptations of literary works like “Sense and Sensibility," comic elements are liberally sprinkled throughout “Dracula." The word “Shush," invoked several times throughout the play, is deployed to hilarious effect near the end.īut the production works best when it dives into the darkness, embracing the play’s elements of straight-up horror. So by all means, drive a stake through the heart of the patriarchy. “Dracula” has a few things to say about the gender power imbalance, in the 19th century and today, that dictate who has autonomy and who does not. And heaven knows there are headlines aplenty that substantiate that view. ![]() More broadly, Hamill wants us to think about the extent to which a monster resides in all of us - especially men - that can emerge at any moment. Dracula, after all, is the ultimate sexual predator. So playwright Hamill is more than justified in thinking it’s high time the tale of the sanguinary Count was filtered through a feminist, #MeToo lens. Murnau’s silent film “Nosferatu” (1922) to countless dramatizations on screen and stage since then, depictions of the Dracula story have overwhelmingly been told from the perspective of men. A death point is added by a character doing the following killing the living and killing an identified vampire.And I rather enjoyed the splash-zone experience, much as I rather enjoyed Michelle Aguillon’s deliberately over-the-top production, even though playwright Hamill’s larger ambitions for “Dracula” yield only mixed results.įrom the publication of Stoker’s gothic novel in 1897 to F.W. Genre (s): Drama, Action & Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, Suspense, Science Fiction. Please note that a character gets a "kill" for killing a named person. Summary: Vanessa and the other survivors go deep into the world of the vampire apocalypse, where they discover old alliances have crumbled and new connections expose buried secrets about the Rising, the Van Helsing heritage, and the survival of humankind. The following is a list of characters deaths on Syfy's Van Helsing. ![]()
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