After several minutes of smoke swirling in crimson-lit darkness, a voice announces: “Dracula – a Victorian melodrama” as the curtain goes up and that is exactly what follows. That is the wonder of director Peter Macfarlane MBE’s achievement – a perfect conservation of the spirit and essence of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel in what Macfarlane insists is a totally rewritten rewrite of his first transformation of Dracula into a play back in 1972 (Dracula – a Gothic tale reimagined is the full title of the current version). Added scenes while omitting any Transylvanian castle, new and reworked characters, a lively variety of background music and yet it remains the “over the top” Victorian melodrama which would have gladdened the Irish author’s heart. Everything and nothing of Bram Stoker.
Not a musical as some in the audience might have been expecting from the production of the late Angel Mahler, this Dracula is instead a superbly acted and staged performance of the Suburban Players. The title might be “Dracula” but as its many cinematic and theatrical versions demonstrate, not only the blood-sucking count (Stanley David Nash) but also his prime female target (Ana Luna Pogonza Kirschgen), Professor Van Helsing (Ricardo Truppel), Jonathan Harker (Valentín Angel Fernández) and the madman Renfield (Jan Pereira) all have to be good too and they are.
Yet not content with this Macfarlane intensifies the acting to a further level by giving the secondary characters a protagonism they do not usually enjoy in other plays and films. Verónica Taylor as the bossy housekeeper Mrs Dudley, Agustina Papú as the maid Molly and Diego San Miguel as the overwrought asylum attendant Butterworth all rise to the occasion, as does Sandy Cairncross in the much smaller part of the vicar.
But back to the main cast. Stanley David Nash has a physique du rôle to match Bela Lugosi or Max Schreck, playing up the melodrama to the full by swirling his black cloak all over the stage and modulating the tones of his foreign accent between insidious charm and sinister menace. Ana Luna Pogonza Kirschgen (already a Suburban Players veteran at a tender age with West Side Story,” Black Comedy and Roxane in Simon Chater’s Cyrano, the group’s first production of the year) is brilliant in the female lead of Lucy Seward, alternating between the demure Victorian daughter and a vampire who is very much the vamp. An extended footnote is needed here – almost every version stars Mina (Wilhelmina) Murray with Lucy (Westenra in the original script) as her best friend and an early victim of Dracula. But Macfarlane places a blood-drained Mina in her grave in an opening scene while Lucy is made the beloved daughter of Dr Jack Seward (acted well as a sceptical scientist by Nicolás Sansalone, the title role in last year’s What didn’t the butler do?), head of the psychiatric hospital near Carfax Abbey (Count Dracula’s residence) and Lucy’s suitor in Bram Stoker’s novel, not her father.
Full marks also to the other main characters. Valentín Fernández (the secretary Hector McQueen in Murder on the Orient Express and the pouting neighbour in Black Comedy) as Lucy’s fiancé Jonathan Harker perhaps takes the lead in overacting but that qualifies as good acting when in the context of Victorian melodrama. Ricardo Truppel adds another foreign accent to good effect as the eccentric Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Jan Pereira as the superbly athletic and manic mental patient Renfield stole the show in many eyes on the basis of the final applause.
Macfarlane’s imagination carried the mise-en-scène beyond the stage with entrances down the aisles and a scary moment for the audience when confronted by the vampire fangs of the supporting cast – an interactive production in many ways with its special effects. The costumes were perfect for 1897 and the stage management conveyed the atmosphere of a Transylvanian castle with the lighting and myriad bats on the stonework even if Macfarlane’s version unfolds in the Yorkshire town of Whitby throughout.
Hard to imagine that many readers will not have seen some version of Dracula in their lives or be unfamiliar with the story – this reviewer invites them to enjoy Macfarlane’s take. Only seven performances since opening night on August 7 with the last two this weekend – today at 9pm and tomorrow at 7pm at the Centro Cultural San Isidro, Avenida del Libertador 16,138. Tickets can be sought at the official website or the booking site.
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