So, we will review the plays side-by-side, enabling you to sort out which is which and then plan your Halloween/early holiday theater schedule accordingly.
In Dracula: The Bloody Truth, now at Great Lakes Theater, a crotchety Professor Van Helsing tells the audience that he is going to correct the record and tell the true story of Count Dracula, not the “false” one authored by Bram Stoker in his classic 1897 novel. To achieve this, he has hired three actors to help him.
Written by John Nicholson and La Navet Bete, a British theater group devoted to physical and slapstick storytelling, this Dracula isn’t for those who are seeking a serious tale about the blood-sucking Count. it’s more of a clown show, like Monty Python with a light dusting of Jerry Lewis and a touch of Noises Off.
Four performers—Lynn Robert Berg, Jeffery C. Hawkins, Jodi Dominick, and Joe Wegner—create about 40 different characters as the story bounces from Dracula’s spooky castle to the Transylvanian mountains and other locales. Throughout the piece, Van Helsing registers his frustration with the flawed players he has hired, while lamenting errant light and sound cues, intentionally botched lines, and a litany of other torments.
For this material to work, the actors must be accomplished clowns in the technical sense. It isn’t easy performing at a fast pace while quickly creating and then dispensing with characters. These four thespians, all GLT veterans, do a creditable job with each garnering laugh-out-loud moments.
To be specific, Hawkins fashions a silky and slinky Dracula who slides about the stage like he’s on roller shoes. Wegner has his best moments as Renfield, a patient in an asylum with a fondness for eating various insects and the occasional canary. Hawkins and Dominick are amusing as a cart driver and his wife whose cart is powered by a toy rocking horse. And Berg anchors it all with his peevish Van Helsing turn that borders on OCD.
Although there are plenty of laughs, director Charles Fee fails to bring it all together in a smooth and increasingly hilarious ensemble performance. As constituted it feels like a collection of individual bits, some of which work and others that don’t. Indeed, the biggest reaction in Act One came from the old standby of audience participation, a surefire but cheesy way to conjure goodwill with an audience.
Dracula: The Bloody Truth works hard to please. However, there are too many old jokes and familiar tropes that lack the comic inspiration of a fully anarchic yet maniacally disciplined production.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein now at the Cleveland Play House, the story is played straight-up, and it succeeds wonderfully on all levels. Indeed, it will be difficult in this small space to adequately describe the transportive and immersive aspects of this production.
The conceit is that the Frankenstein author, Mary Shelley, is a teenager in 1816 who is relaxing with some of her pals, two of whom happen to be the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the romantic versifier Lord Byron. The boys are competing to see who can tell the scariest story when Mary insists on playing also.
Thus begins this story-within-a-story, as Mary casts her friends in her tale of Victor Frankenstein, the irreverent anatomical adventurer who dares to challenge the power of the gods and create the “spark of life.” In her play Percy plays Victor; Byron is the Creature, made by Victor from freshly harvested animal parts; and Mary is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley herself along with Elizabeth Lavenza, the adopted sister and later wife of Victor.
If that sounds confusing, it isn’t since the evocative script by David Catlin, under the deft and lively direction of Michael Barakiva, keeps everything completely understandable and riveting. Both sets of characters come alive, bursting with youthful vitality, playfulness and plenty of sexual energy.
In the central role of Victor (plus Percy and others), Gavin Michaels registers Victor’s passion for finding the secret of life, and his equally compelling disgust at the monstrosity he has fashioned. Meanwhile Kayodè Soyemi, after nailing his characterization of randy Byron, then morphs into the Creature who is learning to be a human even as his creator is trying to destroy him. And underlying it all are Mary and Elizabeth’s yearnings for love and connection. They are ably supported by Josh Bates and Ellen Grace Diehl in a flurry of smaller but memorable parts.
This is a tale of horror and passion, and it is enlivened by Lex Liang’s scenic and costume designs. The play is staged in the round, with audience on all sides staring down at the circular stage that is not burdened with a single stick of period furniture. Instead, there is a conversation pit with curved steps and a trap door that doubles as Victor’s lab, which is activated when a stark dome above lowers slightly. It is a perfect playground for this splendid cast.
The only wrinkles in this magnificent mix include the Creature itself which, despite Soyemi’s best efforts, never comes across as the imposing, fearsome monster that he’s supposed to be. The actor wears a monster head on top of his own, à la The Lion King animal costuming, but it doesn’t quite generate the kind of fear and trembling that it might. Also, the conclusion of the play feels overwritten and over-extended, as each of the principals get their own exit moment.
But not to worry, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at CPH is a glorious production of an enduring story that sails far beyond and above the cartoonish cinematic versions. And attention, all you smartphone zombies: It’s alive…IT’S ALIVE! So lift your heads from those glowing screens for a couple hours and go experience live theater at its best.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Through November 12 at the Cleveland Play House, Playhouse Square, Outcalt Theatre, 1407 Euclid Ave., clevelandplayhouse.com, 216-241-6000.
Dracula: The Bloody Truth
Through November 5 at Great Lakes Theater, Playhouse Square, Hanna Theatre, 2067 E. 14th Street, 216-241-6000, greatlakestheater.org.
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This article appears in Oct 11-25, 2023.
