I must have first seen the Bela Lugosi Dracula when I was 10 or 11 years old and an addict of Friday night "Shock Theatre" on the old Channel 13. I found the movie terrifically exciting and much more palatable than its nearest rival for primo horror classic, the Boris Karloff Frankenstein. After all, Frankenstein was full of ambiguities too refined for my pre-adolescent taste, such as the scientific zeal of the boundary-breaking doctor and the childlike innocence of his awkward, misshapen monster. Dracula, on the other hand, was an entirely evil vampire, with not a drop of compassion or compunction in his desiccated body.
Too young to find anything interesting in a morally equivocal character (to cite another example, I found it very confusing that the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolfman didn't want to be a Wolfman), I thrilled at the all-round nastiness of the Romanian bloodsucker and cheered his demise at the hands of the good guys. What a relief it was to think (as I turned off the set and trudged to bed) that even an evil as ancient as Dracula's could be defeated with good intentions, and an auspiciously timed stake through the heart.
Well, that was then, and this, I'm convinced, is now. So as I drove to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center the other day to see Steven Dietz's version of Dracula, I tried to imagine what adult vision playwright Dietz would bring to Bram Stoker's tale. I guessed at three likely strategies. First, he might emphasize the story's sexual implications, particularly concerning Dracula's relations with his female minions. Or he might highlight the unasked-for nature of Dracula's affliction, turning the dean of nervous neckbiters into a sympathetic victim. Finally, I guessed that he might search out the comedy in this super-serious narrative and its trinity of bats, blood and (fanged) bimbos. As I pulled into a remarkably unoccupied parking space just a short walk from the Shimberg Playhouse, I realized that I was feeling genuine excitement about this Dracula. Whatever Dietz chose — even if it was something unexpected — I was already grateful for this opportunity to revisit an old, beloved favorite.
Reader, I was wrong. I guessed badly. I didn't see it coming. Because Dracula at TBPAC isn't an update, isn't a re-vision, isn't modern, postmodern, satirical or even in any way interpretive. Dracula at TBPAC is the same old story I knew in childhood, only I'm not 10 years old anymore and I don't have the same taste for Transylvanian melodrama. This show is the good guys against the bad guys, the unbitten against the bitten, and you'd have to be a kid to find it suspenseful or frightening. To put it bluntly, the show is tiresome: It adds nothing, changes nothing, and suffers, in comparison to the movie and book, from the limitations of live theater. I walked into the Shimberg bristling with excitement and within a half-hour I was already hoping for the final curtain.
The acting didn't much help. There's only one entirely satisfying performance in these two acts of theater, and that's Paul Potenza's as Renfield, the insect-eating madman who calls Dracula his master. Alone among Dietz's characters, Renfield actually has something like an ironic perspective, and Potenza's supercharged performance magnifies this irony and makes it riveting. The other actors, unfortunately, seldom rise above the literal, wearisome narrative. Even that superb actor Brian Shea can do nothing with Dietz's Dracula except play him as a disapproving, rather morose and languorous sleepwalker.
Ami Sallee Corley, as vampire victim Lucy, has some fine moments, and Katrina Stevenson, as Lucy's friend Mina, holds her own in a predictable part. But Jason Evans, as lawyer Jonathan Harker, speaks too fast and garbles his words, while Ryan McCarthy, as Dr. Seward, can't compete with his patient Renfield for our attention. Finally, John Snell as fearless Professor Van Helsing offers us too many contradictions. His accent is unspecifiable, his clothing looks modern, his long hair, eventually tied back in a ponytail, seems all wrong for the period. If Van Helsing were less important, these problems might be forgivable. But near the end of the story, he's Dracula's main adversary, putting the defects in his portrayal right at the center of our consciousness.
The other elements of the production are a mixed bag at best. Fortunately, there are a few strengths. For example, Joy Platt's costumes are appropriately 19th century (except, again, for Van Helsing's outfit) and Brian Smallheer's multileveled set is genuinely first class: It allows us to travel from Mina's bedroom to Dracula's castle and back again at the speed of imagination. David Jenkins' direction is crisper in the first act than in the second, though his staging of Dracula's entrances — making us wait, as if for a celebrity — is always clever and effective. Chris Holcom's special effects aren't so special, however: There's a distracting, mechanical hissing noise whenever "fog" drifts into the playing area, and there's a weird, unexplained flame that briefly flares when Van Helsing confronts Dracula. As for the inevitable stakes through the incorrigible hearts, they're performed out of the audience's sight — a cheat, if you ask me and further reason for dissatisfaction.
So what use is this Dracula? It's a play that never really justifies its own existence, never gives us more than the film did, never scares us or thrills us. When I was a kid, I might have enjoyed its moral simplicity and atmosphere of earnest hocus-pocus. But those days are gone. Now I want attitude in an adaptation. And I want a stage version that does more than present an abridged movie classic.
Webb's City Returns. He's back. J.E. "Doc" Webb, whose drug store emporium once covered 10 city blocks in St. Petersburg, returns to the stage this weekend at the Mahaffey Theater. Webb's City: The Musical, crafted by playwright Bill Leavengood and composer Lee Ahlin, played to near-sell out houses in summer 2000. It opens again this Thursday and continues until Saturday the 24th. Steve Wilkerson again will portray Doc Webb; new cast members include Jack Brand, Carolyn Zaput, Jeff Norton and Steven Clark Pachosa. You think kitsch doesn't sell? Watch for the mermaids, the dancing chickens and yes, the kissing rabbits.
Webb's City: The Musical plays at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 15-17, 20, 23 and 24; and 2 p.m. Nov. 17 and 24. Tickets are $15-$25. The Mahaffey Theater is located at 400 First St. S., St. Petersburg. Call 727-892-5767. Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or by calling 813-248-8888, ext. 305.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2001.