The stage-struck Bram Stoker (1841-1912) had a nightmare, which he said was produced by a dinner of dressed crab and in 1897, having done his research, he published the most famous Gothic horror story of them all.
The real Dracula was the 15th century Balkan Prince, Vlad V, a psychopath who cut, minced, scraped and boiled his victims. He forced mothers to eat their children and husbands to eat their wives. Vlad, known to his chums as Vlad the Impaler, was said to have impaled 25,000 people.
Stoker’s Dracula first appeared on the London stage in 1927. Uniformed nurses were in attendance for the faint-hearted. The play ran for 391 performances . Bela Lugosi, who played the lead, went on to make the film version, the top grossing movie of 1931.
Stoker’s novel had been described as “a kind of incestuous, necrophiliac, oral-anal-sadistic all-in male wrestling.” It has inspired more than 50 films (including F W Murnau’s 1922 silent Nosferatu with Max Schrek), at least three stage plays, a ballet and a chamber musical.
The Count has been played by such actors as Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Lon Chancy, Frank Langella, John Carradine, Dennis Price, Noel Willman, Ferdy Mayne, Ingrid Pitt, Denholm Elliott, Jack Palance, Klaus Kinski, George Hamilton and Gary Oldman.
Now Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen have written a camp, gender-bending spoof which is never funny enough and has no vampire terrors.
Also, a conversation between the two writers, printed in the programme, led me to believe the production was going to be much queerer erotic and that drop-dead sexy Dracula (James Daly) and naïve estate agent Jonathan Harker (Charlie Stemp) would end up in bed (or coffin) together.
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