Dracula

It's a peculiar issue with Frank Wildhorn musicals; they typically open to poor critical reception, but are popular with fans and run for years, but still close losing money in the end. Jekyll & Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel in particular have continued to be extremely popular in regional theaters. He has a knack for yearning power ballads, like Dance of the Vampire's Jim Steinman, and tends to write musicals based on classic literature (in addition to Jekyll & Hyde and Pimpernel, his works include versions of The Count of Monte Cristo and Cyrano DeBergerac). So Dracula fits well within his repetoire.

Dracula, however, wasn't as popular with audiences as some of his other work, and closed after only 157 performances. The show received much publicity for its spectacular special effects--such as Dracula crawling head-first down the walls, and a brief nude scene from one of the female leads. The main complaints critics had about the show was that it was lacking in emotion and tension, the lyrics were rather pedestrian, and the plot was fairly incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't completely familiar with the novel. They weren't impressed with the music, either.

So the show closed on Broadway, but after some revisions went on to greater success in ...stop me if this sounds familiar...Austria and Germany!

I managed to find the German cast album on iTunes, and I actually really like a lot of the songs. It looked like they fixed a lot of the things that weren't working about the Broadway production, but I can see why people had issues with the story. For example, Dracula comes to London and starts seducing Lucy, but he really has big plans for her best friend and Jonathan Harker's fiancee, Mina. He has one little voice-over of Mina hearing him speaking in her mind, and suddenly they're singing about how deep their love is, and how Mina is so conflicted about marrying Jonathan.

On YouTube, I found that someone posted an entire TV recording of the Austrian production in chunks. There's no subtitles, but my German is good enough that I was able to keep up. I really like the performers, but it has some weird staging issues. There's a living room unit at the front of the stage with a door and couch stage right, and a desk and stair unit far right. They do a lot of split-stage stuff with action going on in the front, and then you see the graveyard or Dracula's castle behind them (Check out a clip of  the love duet "Whitby Bay" below to see what I mean.) The problem is, that living room set is always there, even when nothing's going on in the foreground. And then there's the most uncomfortable sex scene I've ever witnessed in a musical, when Dracula's brides seduce Jonathan at 08:00  below:



I was confused by Jonathan's anachronistic wife-beater style undershirt; then I understood when I realized that the brides have to tear it off him every night!

One of the things I think they did get right in this story is the seduction and transformation of Lucy. Caroline Vasicek plays the role really well, and has a youthful look that makes her seduction even creepier. Thomas Borchert plays Dracula, and I like him a lot. He's got a great voice and stage presence; he's really minimal in the way he plays the character, which I think actually makes him more captivating. I do have a bit of an issue with the design, though; he doesn't really look vampiric at all, and also Lucy's burial costume is a pretty blatant rip-off of the Francis Ford Coppola film.

Anyway, watch these two videos, because this was my favorite part of the show. In the first video, Lucy has fallen ill, but secretly invites Dracula in ("come and satisfy your thirst on me"). In the second video, Arthur comes to wake her, but she attacks him. Vampire expect Van Helsing subdues her, and she dies. After a brief scene in the graveyard, Dracula and Mina sing of their plans to "go drinking" together, while Van Helsing and Co. plan to stop them.





So while there are a lot of things I like about this show, I can see the story problems than held it back. Despite its success in Austria, I don't think this staging entirely overcame those problems, although it toned down the over-the-top effects for a more even presentation.

EDIT: I found a promotional clip of actual footage from the Broadway version, although it doesn't show much:

Dance of The Vampires

I'm going to start with Dance of the Vampires, as it was the first in a chain of bloodsucking failures in the last decade, and also it was a notable flop at the time it premiered on Broadway.

It's also noteworthy because the show had already enjoyed great success in Austria and Germany for several years before going to Broadway, and continues to play there to this day. There's an interesting connection to the German theatre scene that you'll notice across the next few posts.

It's always best to start at the beginning (and continue on until you come to the end, then stop). So this story starts in 1967 with Roman Polanksi's horror-comedy film The Fearless Vampire Killers.



The original musical version actually premiered in 1997 in Vienna, Austria. The German lyrics are by Michael Kunze, and the music was written by Jim Steinman, best known for his work with Meatloaf and Bonnie Tyler (think big ol' power ballads). As a matter of fact "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is actually in Tanz Der Vampir, as a love duet for the leads.



However, they massively re-wrote the Broadway version so that it  turned into this mish-mash of sensuous gothic romance (I suspect in an attempt to cash in on "Phantom" success) and Mel Brooks style parody. It was like two different shows which were incredibly at odds with one another. The results looked something like this:

After a prolonged development period and 61 previews, the show finally opened, was trounced by critics, ran for 56 performances, and then closed, losing a crapload of money.

The show is still running successfully in it's original version in Europe; if you're ever in Stuttgart, you can see it for yourself. As far as I know there is no cast recording of the Broadway version, but you can download the Austrian cast album on iTunes. 

EDIT: I was poking around the website for the current production in Germany, and I found a nice video of the show I thought I'd share. Check it out!