NEWTON, NC – Bare your fangs and get out of those coffins, it’s Halloween time in North Carolina!
An enduring fixture of October theatre are local productions of “Dracula.” Bram Stoker’s classic novel has lent itself to constant interpretation, reinvention, and enthusiasm in the 127 years since it was originally published.
Everyone, it seems, has a version of the vampire tale up their capes, and it’s common in October to find a coven of dedicated undead thespians haunting a theater near you.
Despite the legion of Counts out there, don’t count out The Green Room Community Theatre.
The Newton, N.C. company has unleashed a fiercely funny take on the totemic tale, finding freshness in Victorian fussiness and the amusingly erotic in the classically romantic.
The Green Room production consists of a mere six performers, and that’s the best part. The versatility of this “Dracula” cast is worth the price of admission alone. The actors shift between costumes, accents and parts with ease, and their antic quick-changes brought much of the comedy to the party.
That is what Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors feels like at its best: a party, complete with pop music, leather pants and fog machines. Ironically, the show struggles more as a faithful adaptation of Dracula.
Dracula the novel is undeniably influential and features indelible iconography, but it’s not the most exciting work of fiction. Much of the book is written in letters between characters about the strange going-ons in their small English towns. There are hundreds of pages devoted to the bedside manner of our heroes after one of their number falls mysteriously ill.
Perhaps in a less vampire-versed 1897, this mystery was thrillingly compelling. Read through a contemporary lens, it can be exasperating. The reader knows that the characters are being preyed upon by a vampire, but the characters don’t for an excruciatingly long time. That turgid, unintended dramatic irony creates a great impediment for narrative momentum. In a work of adaptation, it would be ill-advised to replicate that component of the “Dracula” tale.
Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors began promisingly in that regard. In an opening prologue, the cast introduces the show holding copies of the novel. These books are thrown over the characters’ shoulders, a visual metaphor of what this show almost was.
The beginning and ending of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors are zippy, zany, and full of zingers. The performers are permitted to riff on the archetypes and loose plotline of the novel while putting comedy at the forefront. The middle act is where the performance lost steam, adhering to the bedridden boredom and aimlessness of the book a bit too much for a show that promised not to fool with fidelity.
The middle tone shift might be most noticeable because the comedic powerhouse of the show is the one sidelined to her bed.
Melissa Bowden played a lisping and lascivious vision of Mina, the heroine of the novel and the comic relief of this comedy. Bowden brought the house down. Her physical comedy was remarkable, gyrating guffaws out of the audience with awkward aplomb. After she is bitten and Mina is taken off-stage, transforming Bowden into vampire hunter Van Helsing, the show missed her powerful presence.
This isn’t to undersell the rest of the cast, also excellent in spite of the show’s bloated middle.
Brandon Nuhfer was incredible. This caricature of Jonathan Harker could be obnoxious and whiny in the wrong hands, but Nuhfer transforms the wimp into a wildly funny and enthusiastic hypochondriac. Nuhfer as Harker was the beating heart of the show and a consistently hilarious protagonist. During a late show turn, too, Nuhfer is virtually unrecognizable, fully transforming at the drop of a dime.
Scott Major and Kayla Rivers were wonderful as father-and-daughter duo Dr. and Lucy Westfeldt. The two aren’t tasked with the constant character switching of the rest of the cast and they carried the responsibility of guiding the audience through the on-stage insanity with grace.
Ethan Fite, however, is the real discovery of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors.
Fite played five characters in the show: a cab driver, Kitty the maid, madman Renfield, cowboy suitor Lord Havemercy and a drunken gravedigger. He was exceptional at all five. Fite flitted in and out of costume but was never once out of character. His voicework was virtuosic, and the audience was cheering at every sight of Fite by the end of the show.
Finally, Christian Underwood rounded out the cast as the Count himself. Underwood brought another layer to “physical” comedy, playing this version of Drac as a shirtless seductor without reservation.
There are minor critiques to be had about the show – the pop culture references didn’t often land and the sound effects were consistently corny, for instance – but you wouldn’t have known it from the response of the packed house.
Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors runs until October 13th. Do yourselves a favor, transform into a bat, and fly over to Newton to sink your teeth into a fearlessly fun night out.