Review: The Passion of Dracula at Long Beach Playhouse

The Passion of Dracula offers a devilishly good mix of Gothic ingredients.

Long Beach Playhouse’s production of The Passion of Dracula is like a good Halloween-themed cocktail. If you’re making a Vampire Gimlet or a Vampire Martini, you don’t waste money on exorbitantly high-priced spirits; you opt for a good quality novelty brand suitable to your theme, like Blavod Black Vodka or Vampire Red Vodka. What matters is not price tag or snob appeal but how well the base spirit blends with other ingredients into a mixture that is hopefully more than the sum of its parts.

The Passion of Dracula achieves precisely this. It is difficult to pinpoint a single element that makes the show great, but good script, performances, and production values coalesce to form a sanguinary beverage that should satisfy the Count’s blood-thirsty fans.

Passion of Dracula Review: Effectively Retelling an Oft-Told Story

Sticking with our perhaps tortured metaphor, the base spirit of The Passion of Dracula is the script by Bob Hall and David Richmond, adapted from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. The adaptation dates to 1977, when it provided an off-Broadway alternative to the old stage version of Dracula by Hamilton Dean and John Balderston, which was having a Broadway revival with Frank Langella in the lead. Perhaps surprisingly, Hall and Richmond’s version (which owes at least as much to Dean and Balderston as it does to Stoker) is a noticeable improvement. The playwrights evinced such a firm grasp on how to retell a familiar tale that nearly five decades later it feels fresher than many film, tv, and stage adaptations that have followed (including the heavily revised version of the Dean-Balderston play at NoHo Arts Center in 2009).

At a mental asylum in a rural English village, Dr. Seward’s ward and patient Wilhelmina (here called “Willie” instead of the usual Mina) is prone to sleepwalking, awakening every morning wasted away, though she seems to recover her strength during the day – until the process repeats itself the next night. Seward is seeking help from Professor Van Helsing, an expert in rare disease, and Dr. Helga Van Zandt, a student of Freud; although intrigued, neither of them can identify the etiology of Willie’s condition, which is similar to that which killed several local girls.

Meanwhile, Dracula introduces himself to his neighbors, charming the ladies and irritating the gentlemen, including newly arrived reporter Jonathan Harker, who is falling in love with Willie. Dracula begins by subtly manipulating the mortals before escalating to hypnotic control and vampirzing them; all of this is in pursuit of Willie, whom he plans to make his undead queen. The humans seem outmatched by the immortal vampire, but they vow to fight to the end, whatever that end may bring…

This summary probably does not fully explain why The Passion of Dracula works so well. All of the familiar elements are present, but their strategic placing in the narrative prevents the audience from feeling a step ahead of the story, which manages to generate legitimate tension instead of nostalgic affection. Willie combines elements of book’s Mina and Lucy, particularly the latter’s sleepwalking, which makes her the center of attention throughout the play instead of spending the first half of the story on someone else. The madman Renfield shows up sooner than expected, adding an early jolt of lunacy. Stodgy Lord Godalming is having s secret affair with Dr. Van Zandt (a new character who brings an interesting psychoanalytic perspective on events). Jonathan Harker fortuitously arrives just when a little extra manpower is needed, and he actually gets to woo Wilhelmina (to whom he is already engaged at the start of the novel).Van Helsing is creeping toward the realization that Dracula is undead, but the script does not belabor the point, keeping the professor largely offstage in the first act until he makes his presence felt in Act Two.

The changes add new winkles to the vampire’s cloak, yielding surprising results, like Godalming’s fateful dilemma when Van Zandt falls under Dracula’s spell. The characters evince a greater sense of self-doubt about their ability to defeat the Vampire King, making the battle feel like less of a foregone conclusion, and Willie emerges as someone much stronger expected, taking an unanticipated role in the climax.

Passion of Dracula Review: Setting the Stage for the Count

So much for the cocktail’s base spirit. What ingredients does the Long Beach Playhouse add to enhance flavor profile? Basically, performances and production values that maximize the play’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses.

Set in a single drawing room at Dr. Seward’s asylum, The Passion of Dracula follows the example of the Dean-Balderston adaptation in terms of making the Count an at least initially welcome guest, a sophisticated if somewhat arrogant stranger who mingles in polite society, intriguing both characters and audiences. This intimate setting is well captured on the main stage of Long Beach Playhouse, which is almost theater-in-the round, with seating on three sides and the fourth wall forming a simple backdrop (glass doors leading outside), while the stage area extends into the middle of the audience, creating a somewhat immersive feeling, as if you’re in the drawing room with the characters.

Besides impressive set and costumes, the staging makes clever use of the modestly sized venue, with action sometimes spilling into the aisles. During one of Renfield’s escapes, he lurks for several minutes behind the last row on one side of the theatre, putting on quite a show for those sitting nearby. Later, Dracula makes an effectively startling entrance from behind the audience, suggesting without showing his supernatural abilities.

Special effects are mostly limited to atmospheric lighting and fog. Flittering bats are suggested with shadows and sound effects (which is probably better than showing a flapping rubber puppet). There are no bloody stakings on stage nor other gruesome effects, which is not necessarily a criticism, but it does contradict the promotional campaign (more on which later).

Passion of Dracula Review: Raising the Stakes

Compared to performances we have seen in videos of previous stage and tv productions, the ensemble at the Long Beach Playhouse acquits itself quite well. There seems to be something about the text of The Passion of Dracula that invites actors to ramp up the Victorian melodrama or simply descend into camp. Here, the cast captures both drama and occasional flashes of humor. One or two jokes border on spoofery, but somehow the cast toss them off as humorous asides that seldom undermine the danger and sometimes raise stakes: When a stalwart Englishman, after dispatching his vampire-girlfriend in defense of king and country, mutters, “My darling…could have had me – but never England,” laughter ensues. The laughter, however, fools the audience into dropping their guard before tragedy strikes.

Everyone seems to be having a good time on stage. Trevor Hart is a hoot as the fly-eating Renfield. Alan Bornemann adds a more doddering working-class sort of comic relief as the asylum attendant (we assume his difficult-to-understand accent was part of the joke). Jay Miramontes manages to make Harker (a character seldom served well in adaptations) quite endearing in his relationship with Willie. Guy C. van Empel initially seems to be merely stuffy as Lord Godalming, but he actually sells the heartbreak when his mistress falls under the vampire’s spell. James Matthis aims for a more human Professor Van Helsing, one who is simply a wise man, not an archetypal vampire hunter whose expertise guarantees victory. Although we wished the script had done more with the psychoanalytic aspect of Dr. Van Zandt, Andrea Stradling does a fine transition from being intellectually intrigued by the Count to becoming his minion. Caitlin Zinn sells herself as a helpless victim so well that her turn at the end is quite surprising – and very convincing. As Dr. Seward, Michael Hovance is not really given a big moment to shine; rather, he does solid work as the rock around which everything else circulates.

Ultimately, any adaptation of Stoker’s tale depends on the actor in the title role. Ben Trotter has the right look (we’re pretty sure that, had we had seen him out of costume and makeup, we would have pegged him as the guy playing Dracula), and he deftly navigates the Count’s shift from feigning a friendly demeanor to letting his true nature show. Although his Transylvanian accent feels a trifle affected, his commanding stage presence makes the vampire’s threat so tangible that we really do fear for the other characters, leaving the audience nervously balanced on the edge of their seats as the final battle between immortal and mortals reaches its climax.

Passion of Dracula Review: Hammer Horror?

Our one gripe with The Passion of Dracula is not with the play itself but with its publicity. Long Beach Playhouse has been promoting their production as being “in the bloodcurdling and sensational tradition of Hammer horror films,” referring to the English company that took old-fashioned horror icons like Dracula and gave them vibrant new life from the 1950s through the 1970s, adding visceral energy and a Technicolor splash of gore never seen before on screen. Long Beach Playhouse has even used promotional artwork clearly inspired by Hammer’s 1958 classic Horror of Dracula (see below).

Look-alike poster from The Passion of Dracula

Original poster artwork for Horror of Dracula

Poster for The Passion of Dracula (left) clearly inspired by the poster for Horror of Dracula (right)

In spite of this, Hall and Richmond’s play is not particularly indebted to Hammer. It harkens back to a somewhat older approach; its main update is conflating the fictional vampire with his historical antecedent, the Transylvanian warlord Vlad Tsepes, known as Dracula (i.e. “Son of the Dragon”), whose existence had been popularized in the 1970s by the non-fiction book In Search of Dracula. Nor does Long Beach Playhouse do much to push their production in the direction of Hammer horror. Had they done so, the female vampire would have been sexier, and the conclusion would have been bloodier. Outside of the Count’s seductive power over women, the only element that feels somewhat reminiscent of Hammer is the use of some fairly vivid color to achieve mood, instead of monochromatic shadows of the classic Gothic style.

It’s probably best to think of the Hammer Horror claim as a sort of garnish that catches your eye and convinces you to sample a cocktail. What matters is not so much how good the garnish looks on the rim but how good the cocktail tastes inside the glass. This particular garnish may suggest a different flavor profile, but you will not be disappointed by the actual taste.

Passion of Dracula Review: Conclusion

There is so much good about The Passion of Dracula that it is easy to overlook its flaws. The ensemble nature of the script prevents it from establishing a strong protagonist, and a few ideas could have been explored in more depth (particularly Van Zandt’s psychoanalytic perspective). The short first act zips by at an energetic clip; after intermission, the longer second act lags before gradually regaining its pace. And after the tense buildup, the finale could have benefitted from a bolder and bloodier conclusion (a la a Hammer horror film).

Fortunately, cocktails can be enjoyed in many variations. A dash of bitters – or in this case, a splash of blood – could have spiced up the mixology at Long Beach Playhouse. But even without that, The Passion of Dracula will get vampire fans buzzed like a bat out of hell.

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