The show is filled with great visuals including clever staging by the director, masterful lighting by Keith Truax, and exquisite interiors by scenic designer Scott Aronow. Select pieces of classical music enhance the mood. The story itself doesn’t usually transfer very well to the stage, but by turning it into a comedy-drama, this one is pretty entertaining.

Ricky Goldman is Dracula, playing him with a hypnotic and comical evilness, and with the enviable ability to burn garlic in a trashcan with the wave of a hand. Many of the roles are double-cast, with Andrea Kayda as Dracula’s love interest Mina on opening night, sweetly creepy throughout as she is under Dracula’s spell from almost the beginning, lying to her family with wide-eyed innocence and agreeing to the murder of her friend Lucy with a slow, but encouraging, nod. Jessica Varley is said Lucy, doing good as both a nice nineteenth-century English girl and as a wicked, bloodsucking, nineteenth-century English vampire. Seth Pearce is a determined vampire hunter Van Helsing aided by a scientific, business-like Dr. Seward (Tyler-Marie Walker) who runs the local asylum. Sam Borenzweig is Mina’s luckless fiancé Jonathan Harker who goes to Transylvania to broker a land deal and runs into a buyer eager to make a killing in real estate…

Most of the show’s comedy revolves around Mina’s quirky family. Peter Oliver is Henry, Mina’s father, who displays uncommon comic timing and uses vocal and physical mannerisms to great effect. Martha is the mother, with Tara Sonin working off her husband perfectly, making for a most hilarious little couple that could be a sitcom in themselves. Especially if helped by Madeline Stolow as their near-sighted, hard-of-hearing maid Charlotte – her glum, bored, slow countenance a hoot to watch, her near-blindness causing near-disasters with the household furniture. Yes, despite her eye trouble, she is the only one who can see the belt on the floor that everyone else has had to ignore – a belt left on stage during an earlier scene after a scuffle. Madeline pauses before exiting the living room, her eyes focusing on the belt as if a bit confused, slowly walking up, picking it up like a dutiful maid, and exiting to the applause of the audience.

And then there is the vampire’s family. Janice Alago, Ayanna ‘Peaches’ Francis, and Ligeia Moltisanti are Dracula’s sensuous ‘brides’ who take great pleasure in their work. Ryan Isles is Dracula’s butler who amuses with his methodical movements and wide, fake grin when he tries to look charming. And then there’s Gaspare DiBlasi as a hilarious wannabe vampire Renfield, whose belt was lost in his kidnapping – another good physical comedian who claims he can count but doesn’t know how to Count Dracula, suggests Dracula wouldn’t eat people because he’s a vegetarian, and who gets carried off by the men in white coats with his feet up in the air while crazily claiming “I’m the vampire! I’m the vampire!” and gnashing his teeth hungrily.

Performs May 1 - 4, 2008.

Rob Hopper
Executive Director
National Youth Theatre