Airborne vampires, blood cannons bring ‘Dracula’ to life on local stage

This story was originally published by ArtsATL.

Driven by action and buckets of blood, “Dracula: The Failings of Men” — a new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel onstage at Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse through Oct. 31 — will give audiences unexpected thrills and spectacle, its makers said.

Havoc Movement, which specializes in stunt, circus and stage combat performance, has brought the vampire adventure story, which was first staged outdoors at the Cherokee Historical Association in Cherokee, North Carolina, to the Tavern for Halloween, keeping its high-flying stunts, blood sprays and swordplay in the process.

Director Jake Guinn said the production is a blast.

“We’ve got some of the better fighters in the theater industry in Atlanta onstage throwing down!” he said. “For people who like sword fights, like myself, there’s some really awesome ones that we get in this show. We definitely go the extra steps, so if people are used to seeing some choreography onstage at the Tavern, this goes further because we believe that the fights are a real storytelling opportunity.”

Guinn said Havoc Movement’s work propels the narrative, in addition to being thrilling to see.

“I came up loving kung fu movies, anime and Eastern representations of fight choreography,” he said. “There are narrative beats that happen in those fights. Characters are going through defining moments during those battles, and we try to highlight that in the work.”

Benedetto Robinson, who adapted the script and also appears as the title character, said he tried to keep the beauty of Stoker’s language intact while creating a version for today’s audiences.

“I read, in its entirety, Bram Stoker’s original novel,” Robinson said. “It is a fascinating book. It’s certainly dated — it came out over 100 years ago — but Stoker’s language is gorgeous. His descriptions are beautiful; his characters are vibrant; his settings are lush. One of the aims of the adaptation was to preserve as much of that as I could, while bringing the work to a modern audience with a modern context and more contemporary values.”

Robinson said the biggest change he made was to change the vampire hunter Abraham van Helsing into Ada van Helsing, played by Mary Ruth Ralston (they/them).

“Van Helsing serves the same function in the story as the mentor to Dr. Jack Seward,” Robinson said. “She comes in and saves the day, despite pushback from turn-of-the-century surroundings and the tremendous weight of sexism at that time.”

Ralston, a staple in Atlanta Shakespeare Company productions, is doing tremendous work as the fearless hero, Guinn added.

“Mary Ruth Ralston is absolutely knocking this out of the park,” the director said. “Of course, for them to hit home runs, all they have to do is wind up. They’re doing a great job.”

For the sake of economy, Robinson said, he concentrated the story of the play on the London section of the novel’s plot, where the beautiful Lucy Westenra — played by Bailey Frankenberg — is being courted by suitors during the day and tempted by the Transylvanian bloodsucker at night.

Frankenberg uses a lyra in the show, a hoop for acrobatics suspended over the stage, and the production also features aerial silks.

“It really gives us an opportunity to explore vampire flight in an interesting way,” Guinn said. “The aerial apparatus is used as a metaphor for Dracula seducing Lucy Westenra to the vampire side.”

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And then there’s the blood.

To get the blood effects that he wanted for the show, Guinn reached out to Sarah Beth Hester, a seasoned performer and puppeteer, to assure that the red sprays hit the walls onstage in just the right way.

“I needed an extra set of hands to assist with the blood because I wanted, no lie, to make blood cannons,” Guinn said. “We borrow a lot of special effects design from film sets and horror houses on how we go about doing our blood effects. (Hester) says the blood design is literally just puppeting water, to get it to hit the walls in a way that gets the look and feel that we want.”

Guinn said audiences don’t need to worry about getting hit with any blood, though.

“We have no splash zone in this production,” he said.

Though Guinn advises parents to judge what their children might be able to handle regarding the violent, action-packed production, he is excited for what audiences will see.

“The kind of magic that we pull off in the show is something that younger people will be astounded by,” he said. “I would always hope that any show I was directing could be called a rollicking good time.”

THEATER PREVIEW

“Dracula: The Failings of Men”

Through Oct. 31. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and Oct. 15, 30 and 31; 2:30 p.m. Oct. 8 and 22. $20-$46. Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse, 499 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 404-874-5299, shakespearetavern.com.

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Benjamin Carr, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, is an arts journalist and critic who has contributed to ArtsATL since 2019. His plays have been produced at the Vineyard Theatre in Manhattan, as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and at the Center for Puppetry Arts. His novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant in 2021.

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