DRACULA ON STAGE
FOLLOWING IS A CHECKLIST OF LIVE STAGE PRODUCTIONS SINCE 1897 inspired or connected to Dracula, including dramas, musicals, operas, ballets, and other dance works performed by professional (or at least semi-professional) companies. I have not included children’s theatre, community theatre, or college productions, owing to the frequent difficulty of verifying basic production information. I welcome information from readers on productions I may have overlooked for inclusion in future editions of Hollywood Gothic.
1897
Dracula, or the Un-Dead (UK / THEATRE; Bram Stoker). Lengthy, oneperformance-only staged reading prepared by Stoker for theatrical copyright purposes.
1917
Dracula. Almost nothing is known about this adaptation, which came to the attention of Universal Pictures during the 1930 negotiations for the film rights. Stoker’s widow disavowed any knowledge or approval.
1924
Dracula (UK / THEATRE; Hamilton Deane). The first authorized dramatization.
1925
Grogh (USA / BALLET; Aaron Copland [music] and Harold Clurman [libretto]). Unproduced ballet inspired by F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), an unauthorized film adaptation of Dracula. Some of the music was later incorporated into Copland’s Dance Symphony.
1927
Dracula (USA / THEATRE; Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston). Balderston’s rewritten version of Deane, which played on Broadway and on tour 1927-31.
Dracula (UK / THEATRE; Charles Morrell). An alternate stage adaptation, privately commissioned by Stoker’s widow, and briefly performed. Screen rights sold to Universal Pictures along with the Deane/Balderston versions and the novel.
1933
Scenes from “Dracula” (USA / VAUDEVILLE). Bela Lugosi took to the road with an abbreviated version of the Deane/Balderston stage play, the only documented appearance of which occurred at the Loew’s State Theatre in New York City as a movie opener. Lugosi offered the part of Lucy to his protégée Carroll Borland in late 1932, but there is to date no evidence that she actually performed it. Production may have had a West Coast tryout.
1953
The Bela Lugosi Revue (USA / CABARET). Norine Dresser, author of American Vampires (1990) recalls seeing this odd Las Vegas attraction, wherein she witnessed a “faltering” Bela Lugosi intoning “I am … Dracula” while descending upon a hypnotized victim.
1966
Dracula Revisited (USA / THEATRE). The first recorded musical-comedy adaptation, performed at the Muse Theatre, Ravenna, Ohio. Nick Kackloudis played Dracula.
1970
Dracula: Sabbat (USA / THEATRE; Leon Katz).
1972
Count Dracula (USA / THEATRE; Ted Tiller). A drawing-room-based challenge to the Deane/Balderston play, wildly popular with regional and community theatres.
1976
Dracula (USA / THEATRE; Crane Johnson).
1977
The Passion of Dracula (USA / THEATRE; Bob Hall and David Richmond).
1978
Dracula: A Modern Fable (USA / THEATRE, Norman Bein). A spoof.
Dracula: A Musical Nightmare (USA / THEATRE; John Aschenbrenner [music], Douglas Johnson [book and lyrics]).
1980
Countess Dracula (USA / THEATRE; Neal du Brock). Premiered at Buffalo’s Studio Arena Theatre, with Betsy Palmer in the title role.
1981
Dracula: A Pain in the Neck (UK / THEATRE). A cabaret by the same title was staged in Copenhagen in 2003.
1983
Dracula: The Story You Thought You Knew (USA / THEATRE; Richard Sharp). A critically praised adaptation originally produced by the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival and later revived in San Francisco with John Astin in the role of Van Helsing.
1984
Dracula (UK / THEATRE; Chris Bond). A semi-satirical adaptation, with generous dollops of class warfare. Daniel Day-Lewis received excellent notices for his performance in the title role. Unique in its innovative use of cocaine to momentarily revive a damsel running on empty.
1985
Dracula (SCOTLAND / THEATRE; Liz Lochhead).
Dracula (CANADA / BALLET; James Kudelka [choreography]; Gustav Mahler [music]; a.k.a. Love, Dracula [1988]).
Dracula, or Out for the Count (UK / THEATRE; Charles McKeown).
1992
Dracula (USA / BALLET; Stuart Sebastian [choreography]).
1993
Dracula: The Ballet (USA / BALLET; Mary L. Hepner [choreography]). A touring production of Ballet Theatre Pennsylvania.
1994
Dracula (USA / DANCE Jill Eathrone Bahr), Production of the Nevada Dance Theatre.
The Dracula Diary: An Opera Macabre (USA / OPERA; Robert Moran [music] and James Skofield [libretto]). Despite the title, there is only the slightest connection to Dracula in this work, first staged by the Houston Grand Opera. An eighteenth-century opera diva becomes a vampire via a book of spells wrested by a gypsy from Dracula’s dying hand.
Mac Wellman’s Dracula (USA / THEATRE; Mac Wellman). A postmodernist deconstruction.
1995
Swoop (USA / THEATRE; Mac Wellman). Wellman’s follow-up to his Dracula, far jokier and featuring a vampire monarch who wears a Burger King crown.
1996
Dracula (UK / BALLET; Philip Feeney [music], Michael Pink [choreography], Christopher Gable [director]). The first British dance adaptation, based on an original concept by Ken Russell, has been frequently revived in Britain and abroad, notably in America by the Atlanta Ballet.
1997
Dracula (USA / THEATRE; Steven Dietz). Premiered at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, this new adaptation has had a vigorous afterlife in regional theatres.
Dracula (UK / THEATRE; Michael Scott). Production of the Machine Theatre Company.
Stoker (SCOTLAND / THEATRE; John Harvey). A multimedia production, juxtaposing Bram Stoker in 1896, as he completes his novel, with a 1996 incarnation of his character Renfield.
1998
Dracula (CANADA / BALLET; Mark Godden [choreography]). This production of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, set to an eclectic classical score, was the basis for Guy Maddin’s 2002 film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary.
1999
Dracula (USA / BALLET; David Nixon [choreography]; Schnittke, Daughtery, Part, Rachmaninoff [music]). Produced by BalletMet, Columbus, Ohio.
Dracula: A Chamber Musical (CANADA / THEATRE; Richard Ouzounian). The closest approximation of a Dracula opera yet produced, with Juan Chioran effectively addressing Dracula’s complexities.
2000
Dracula (USA / BALLET; Paul Vasterling [choreography]). Production of the Nashville Ballet.
2001
Dracula: The Musical (USA / THEATRE; Frank Wildhorn [music], Don Black and Christopher Hampton [book and lyrics]).
Nosferatu (FRANCE / BALLET; Jean-Claude Gallotta [choreography], Pascal Dusapin [music]). Dancer José Martinez scored a hit in the title role, performed at Paris’s Palais Garnier, the original haunting ground of the Phantom of the Opera.
2002
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (USA / THEATRE; Jack Herman). Produced by the Actor’s Theatre of Kent, Ohio.
Dracula: The Musical (USA / THEATRE; Douglas Yetter [music], Michael Hulett [book and lyrics]). Produced by Musical Artists Theatre, Brooklyn Park, Maryland.
2003
Dragula (UK / THEATRE). Campy musical revue presented at Heaven, London’s premier gay disco.