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!

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!

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?