‘Dracula’ a Prime Suspect for Chaminade Fall Play

There is a certain challenge to choosing to perform a thriller on stage as a high school fall production, especially when the curtain goes up post-Halloween and the material has been ingrained in pop culture to such an extent that it is stereotypical. Those were just two of the challenges drama director Michael Bruno had to face with the production of “Dracula,” which made its debut Friday night on the Darby Auditorium stage. 

“I don’t really know how it came around,” Bruno said in choosing the source material. “I had wanted to do something in the monster kind of genre.”

In looking at monsters such as Frankenstein and Dracula, he rediscovered the 1927 play from Hamilton and Deane, but which differed vastly from Bram Stoker’s novel and any other production.

“It’s very loosely based upon a section of the novel,” Bruno said.

While many are familiar with the 1992 film starring Gary Oldman which “tried to capture the novel, which is next to impossible to do on the stage,” Bruno said, the play version takes place entirely in England in early 20th century in the insane asylum, has condensed characters and several in roles different than the novel.

The play has eliminated Lucy Holmwood’s brother Arthur as well as one of her suitor’s, Quincy Morris and “Dracula has no connection with Harker like he does in the novel,” Bruno said. The roles between Mina and Lucy are also reversed, with the play opening after Mina’s death and Dracula pursuing Lucy.

“I don’t even know why they did it that way but they stripped it down to its bare bones,” Bruno said, explaining the play is more a murder mystery “where the audience knows what’s going on but the character’s don’t. It’s basically ‘why is this woman dying?’ and then they figure out, ‘oh, yeah it must be a vampire,’ and the plot of this play is hunting down this vampire.” Mina is included in the production as a ghost, played by freshman Eirinn Kless, a role Bruno made specifically for her.

Described as a “tight knit” group of actors, the cast of 10 is the smallest group Bruno has worked with on a fall production. Normally a fall play boasts between 15 or 20 students.

The titular Transylvanian count – played by sophomore Theo Ebarb, “definitely an up and comer in the organization,” according to Bruno – is not even featured that prominently in the production, with much of the driving force laid on the shoulders of Chaminade senior Jake Kerrigan, a 4 year member of the drama club, who plays Dr. Abraham Van Helsing.

“Van Helsing you could say is the lead but all of the characters are very, very important,” Bruno said. “(Kerrigan)’s done a fantastic job with just capturing the sort of heaviness of a Van Helsing. You look at him and you forget he’s 18 years old.”

Lucy is played by Sacred Heart junior Carolyn Brady, who “basically has to play a split personality because there’s a point when she’s possessed and there’s a point when she’s not so she’s got to play this innocent victim of a vampire and then she’s got to play this seductress kind of a role.”

With much of the source material having the life sucked out of it over the years by countless productions, Bruno admits it makes things a bit more difficult.

“The whole thing with Dracula is trying to make it spooky and we’re not going to scare anybody in 2011 because Dracula has been so satirized by so many different people,” he said, “so we’re just trying to make it spooky, eerie, haunting, really.”

That atmosphere includes candelabras scattered around the auditorium, cobwebs on the seats, a disappearing Dracula and flying bat effect, fog and smoke machines packed with dry ice, and employing a cello along side a piano for “intermittent” haunting music.

“They’re definitely going to be doing a more somber tone,” Bruno said of the orchestra.

The final performance of the play is at 8:15 p.m. on Saturday at Chaminade High School.