Fresh Kills on Broadway
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

You’re lost. Think of the new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” as a musical, and you’re lost. (The marquee over the Belasco says “Dracula the Musical,” but never mind.) Instead, try thinking of it as a monster movie. Is that better?
Actually, no: You’re still lost. “Dracula,” so to speak, sucks. But if you try to avoid thinking of the show as connected in any way to the tradition of “Guys and Dolls” and “Sweeney Todd,” and instead as a low-end model milled at the same factory as “Van Helsing,” all sorts of charming vistas open up.
The show’s philosophy is unmistakably a monster movie’s: maximum amazement with minimal worry about cost. The stage of the Belasco – hardly a big house, and nearly 100 years old – bursts with shifting walls, flying pieces, platforms. Is that a video projector I hear, or $100 bills fluttering on the breeze? It’s both.
Through the extravaganza stride some human beings. Every now and then, the production asks us to divert ourselves from the scenery, because one of them desires to speak, or sing. Gaze now upon Tom Hewitt – tall, dark, handsome – who proves that if you furrow your brows deeply enough, long enough, you can sell anything.
Heisted babies might suit his brides, but Count Dra-KOO-la (his pronunciation) has a jones for chaste British girls. Kelli O’Hara’s pert, blond Lucy makes for a tasty amuse-bouche; Melissa Errico’s statuesque Mina has entree written all over her. From the other end of Europe, he whispers sweet nothings in her ear.
“I must speak with you face to face,” coos the Belasco’s sound system. Ms. Errico looks this way and that. She is dismayed.
But not for long, and this is where, if the show’s creators had souls, things would get really charming. Mr. Hewitt spends much of the show sliding, flying, leaping, and generally whisking around. (This is nothing special: His three brides do the same thing, suggesting that once you join the ranks of the undead, you would no sooner engage in bipedal locomotion than, say, chew with your mouth open, or wear pleats.)
Dracula’s real knack, it seems, is getting women to throw their frilly under things at him, like Transylvania’s Shaft. Lovely Lucy will fling herself, in the altogether, at the glowering count. No sooner does he walk into the room than prim Mina starts acting like a co-ed at Mardi Gras – instead of shiny beads, she’ll get puncture wounds for her trouble. If this pleases the count, Mr. Hewitt keeps it to himself.
So we arrive again at that peculiar Broadway calamity: Trash that doesn’t acknowledge that it’s trash. I almost say trash that doesn’t realize it’s trash, but hundreds of people worked on this production. Maybe I’m just being romantic, but I like to imagine that at some point – when installing the working escalator for Lucy, say – an old-timey stagehand looked around him, shook his head, and mumbled loud enough for everyone to hear: “Trash.” Then, with a sigh, he started rigging the count’s upside-down bat harness.
I rush to add that there’s nothing wrong with trash – or rather, there are some things right with trash. This is the lesson of the monster movie, and its stage equivalents: If you can give thousands of people brainless but genuine joy, then let’s have it. But “Dracula” expects us to take seriously things that cannot possibly be taken seriously. This wouldn’t even work in Hollywood.
Director Des McAnuff proves nimble with all of Heidi Ettinger’s dancing, flying scenery. Too nimble, in fact. The audience seems cowed by the massive operations underway before them. It’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for a lone singer when you’ve just watched three walls click precisely into place, or doors pop up and disappear back into the floor, like household Whack-a-Mole. There’s a notable softness to the show’s applause.
Mr. McAnuff is hardly tarnishing a masterpiece, of course. The music is by Frank Wildhorn, who needs no introduction, unless you are not among the pack of fans obsessed with his “Jekyll & Hyde” and “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” in which case, he is the man to blame for “Jekyll & Hyde” and “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” The book and lyrics were by Christopher Hampton and Don Black, who you’d think might know better.
Despite being sung by two of the loveliest voices on Broadway, the ladies’ ballads are a snooze. This would be true even if the songs weren’t, dramaturgically speaking, just so much fattening for the slaughter. It’s hard to believe that many of these songs were written by a human being, except possibly whoever wrote Meat Loaf’s catalog. They’re loud, soulless, and lacking any sense of proportion. “Deep in the Darkest Night,” a song to hunt a vampire by, would work just as well if you meant to subdue India.
Bart Shatto can’t come up with many laughs in the Owen Wilson role of a dumb, blond Texan. As Van Helsing, stout, severe Stephen McKinley Henderson almost snatches dignity from the jaws of shame; Don Stephenson, as Dracula’s batty, bug-munching accomplice, actually does. As for Ms. Errico and Ms. O’Hara: They have talent, they’ll heal. Mr. Wildhorn, too, will probably sail gaily on. In this Olympic season, let us say he has the courage of the Greeks at Thermopylae: Bravely he holds out, until the last critic’s arrow is loosed. What homeland he’s defending, and why, are separate matters.
Still there are two captivating moments here, and I’ll tell you about them. Even if I haven’t put you off the show by now, foreknowledge won’t spoil the surprises. At one moment, in what seems to be full view, ancient Dracula transforms into young Dracula. Later, while prowling around, he vanishes into the floor. Flashes of pretty flesh, an ancient bit of stage trickery, and gravity: That’s what seven and a half million dollars have bought “Dracula.”