Dracula
In recent seasons, writer-actor Kate Hamill has transformed celebrated novels such as Sense and Sensibility, Vanity Fair, and Little Women into enjoyable stage works.
Hamill’s adaptations may not be entirely faithful to the original plots, but the modern-day viewpoints that she brings to these venerable stories are perceptive and pertinent. And often funny, too.
The playwright’s latest page-to-stage show is Dracula, which opened Monday night at Classic Stage Company, where it runs in rep with a new version of Frankenstein.
Although Hamill terms her Dracula a “feminist rage fantasy,” that’s an extreme description of her lively variation on Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic novel. Like Stoker’s tale, Hamill’s two-act play transpires in the late 19th century and is mostly set at a mental asylum in the English countryside, with a few early scenes transpiring in darkest Transylvania.
The major difference about Hamill’s version is its characters. The key figure of Van Helsing, the fearless vampire hunter, is presented as a forceful middle-aged American female in timeless explorer duds and cornrow braids. “What, you were expecting a withered old Dutch man?” she asserts upon entering. Renfield, the bug-eating lunatic, also happens to be significantly remade as a woman.
There is a point to these sex changes.
Van Helsing’s medical expertise is dismissed initially because she is merely a woman while Renfield, sent by Dracula to England to secure him a stronghold, cannot legally buy property due to her sex and apparently has gone mad partly in frustration. As the play generally traces the original story through a quick series of relatively brief scenes, Hamill brings up other feminist considerations, such as the legitimacy of so-called old wives’ tales.
But mostly this Dracula scares up great melodramatic fun as Van Helsing, assisted by a pregnant Mina Harker, a genteel lady who grows wiser during the pursuit, identifies and tracks down Dracula and his two hissing brides. Of little help to them is the pompous, pigheaded Dr. Seward, who loses his fiancée Lucy to the vampire even as he whines at the women, “You are turning my asylum into a madhouse!”
The play’s frequently comical touches contrast against the darkness represented by Dracula, pansexual in his sanguinary tastes, who postures as a superhuman being but finally is revealed to be a parasite.
Sarna Lapine, the director, skillfully balances the play’s humorous and suspenseful elements in her nimble production performed across a three-sided thrust stage. The visuals are minimal, but the apt use of Leon Rothenberg’s stormy sound design, with its multitudinous echoes, flapping wings, bells, and chilling wind effects, combined with the occasional blood-red drenches of Adam Honoré’s sharply-cued lighting design, provides all the effective atmospherics that the show needs.
Of course the actors, too, must walk a tightrope between being deadly serious and subtly satirical in their attitudes. The nine-member ensemble does so quite nicely, clad in designer Robert Perdziola’s creamy quasi-Edwardian clothes that eventually grow gory. (The designer also provides a witty costume solution for several blood-lettings, but let’s not give that away.)
A no-nonsense Jessica Frances Dukes is perfectly fierce as Van Helsing. Kelley Curran believably wises up as Mina, and Matthew Saldivar manages to make the disbelieving Dr. Seward a guy more pitiable than scorned for his ignorance. Dracula’s character seems a tad underwritten—perhaps he might be depicted more nastily as a patriarchal chauvinist?—but Matthew Amendt gives him some elegant manners.
As a bonus, it’s a pleasure to see the playwright herself madly rave away in the juicy role of Mrs. Renfield, who dementedly writhes around in a busted straitjacket. As a writer and an actor, Kate Hamill is a treat, and it’s nice to find her in such fine form here.
Frankenstein
Quite a contrast to the flamboyant Dracula is a seemingly austere yet compelling adaptation of Frankenstein as crafted for only two performers by Tristan Bernhays.
Mary Shelley’s classic regarding a manmade monster is rendered as a taut 80-minute meld of fine storytelling and music-making.
Stephanie Berry, possessor of an eloquent face and a deep-toned voice, does most of the speaking. Partnering Berry on some of the wordplay is Rob Morrison, a lean musician with a ginger beard and admirable ways with the guitar, mandolin, and other stringed instruments.
Dressed by designer Toni-Leslie James in hip East Village duds, Berry and Morrison naturally relate the famous tale that Bernhays adapts as a tasty blend of narrative, direct address, and choice bits from the text as the creature comes to life and grows into a melancholy being who asks of his creator, “Why did you make me so?”
This mournful ultra-existential epic is much enhanced by Morrison’s music, which sounds folksy in its handsome, rustic strumming. His music dramatically accents the story at appropriate times and lends a certain warmth to Shelley’s otherwise wintry tale.
Timothy Douglas, the director, keeps the performers in intermittent motion atop a black marble floor where everything is lighted low by Adam Honoré to foster an intimate atmosphere. Leon Rothenberg’s subdued sound design further supports the drama and its interpreters. People who appreciate hearing the somber beauty of Shelley’s writing ably performed in a felicitous environment are likely to find this Frankenstein a winner.
Dracula/Frankenstein opened February 17, 2020, at the Classic Stage Company and runs through March 8. Tickets and information: classicstage.org
