Vampire Wrap-Up (and extras)

Well, I hope everyone liked my vampire musical posts! You might want to go back and take another look at the Dance of the Vampires and Dracula posts; in my research I found a little more media to add, so those both have new videos at the ends.

So, why have vampire musicals struggled so much in the past 10 years?
Dance of the Vampires-muddled by competing artistic visions, but still going strong in its original version in Germany and Austria.
Dracula- suffered from major narrative issues, an issue somewhat remedied for overseas productions
Lestat- not a perfect show, but a victim of vampire burnout more than anything else.

Film and television may still be trying to capitalize on the recent vampire trend, but after the quick and bizarre run of a recent Dracula stage play (more on that in another post), I have a feeling we won't see any more vamps on a Broadway stage for a while.

Now for some fun and extras: Lesser Vampire Musicals:

The North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, MA produced a production of Dracula: A Chamber Musical. Written by Canadian theatre critic Richard Ouzounian, it was more popular in his native country. This review in Variety is not particularly flattering. I found a still from the North Shore production, and a clip of a song that I think is from the Canadian production, but I'm honestly not sure. There's apparently a DVD available, but I haven't had any luck finding video.

A recording of the main love duet (along with production stills) from a recent Swedish version, written in English:



And now for the fun part: The Dracula Puppet Musical from Jason Segel's film Forgetting Sarah Marshall. This rockin' version of "Dracula's Lament" was done for the Craig Ferguson show:



and in original flavor:



Enjoy!

Lestat

So now I come to the most recent Broadway attempt at getting vampires on stage, based on the Anne Rice novel, and with music by Elton John.

The show did well box office-wise in its out of town tryouts, probably due to the notoriety of the artists and material. This show opened in 2006, right on the heels of two previous vampiric flops, and critics had probably had about all they could take. It closed after 39 performances.

Now, I haven't read the novel Lestat, but I have read Interview With The Vampire (and seen the film, of course). But it sounds like one of the problems this show encountered is that it tried to cram the plots of both of those novels into the show, and too many extraneous details. For example, in the novels, when drinking from a victim, their live flashes before the vampire's eyes. This was depicted in the show through video projections, and while the quality of the special effects was generally praised, it actually has nothing to do with the plot.

While many of the technical elements and performances managed to impress critics, the music did not do as well, and the lyrics were said to be overly literal.

Okay, lyricists. What going on? Time to step up. Look at my last couple posts of heavily-criticized shows; the other two vampire musicals,  Love Never Dies...it seems like music that is "just ok" can be elevated by insightful, poetic lyrics--or completely destroyed by plodding, pedestrian ones.

The difference between this and the other two shows? Well, it's not big in Germany. It has not gone on to success in any other markets, or had any other stagings since Broadway. It also has not had an offiicial cast recording released.

This was the official advertisement. Didn't actually give you an idea of what the show would look like. No actual songs from the musical in there, either.


Luckily, we have bootleg Youtube videos to show us what the production looked/sounded like. The performers are Drew Sarich and Hugh Panaro:





As I was watching these clips, I remembered that Lestat has the distinction of being way less heterosexual than Dracula or Dance of the Vampires. That probably didn't help make the show more popular with mainstream audiences, either.

Here's the New York Times review: http://theater.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/theater/reviews/26lest.html

Why Do Vampire Musicals always fail?

Soon I'm going to start digging into topics that really interest me, and they're all going to take some time to write and collect research, media, etc. So I thought I'd start by giving a little overview of some of the post I'm planning so I don't overwhelm my readers (and myself).

So, I have a little bit of a fascination with vampire musicals. It seems to make all the sense in the world that they should be incredibly successful on Broadway. Frank Langella had a huge hit starring in a straight-play version of Dracula designed by Edward Gorey. And yet, every vampire musical that has gone to Broadway has been a miserable failure.

The main ones are:
Dance of the Vampires- 2002, based on the Roman Polanski film "The Fearless Vampire Killers", music by Jim Steinman
Dracula- 2004, based on the Bram Stoker novel, music by Frank Wildhorn
Lestat- 2006, based on the Anne Rice novel, music by Elton John.

And to a lesser extent:
Dracula: A Chamber Musical- debuted in 1999, but has never played Broadway/New York. Based on the Bram Stoker novel, music by Richard Ouzounian
and Jason Segel's Dracula Puppet Musical from Forgetting Sarah Marshall

So I'll be starting in on those posts next. If I were to ever have to do a thesis paper or something like that, this would definitely be my topic. Why can't these shows make it work? They generally have the same gothic romantic sensibility of something like "Phantom". Is there only room for one show like that on Broadway? In each post I'll be able to explore the shortcomings of the individual shows, but I'd love feedback on why the supernatural gothic romance musical genre is struggling. Would these shows work now, in the Twilight/Glee era?