The Theater: Kinky Count

(2 of 2)

On the tiny stage of Greenwich Village's Cherry Lane Theater, it is, of course, impossible to duplicate Broadway scenic effects, but there is one maleficently phosphorescent white bat in The Passion of Dracula that seems capable of physically whisking a startled playgoer out of his seat. The adapters have capitalized on the fact that Bram Stoker, who wrote the famed original novel, was British, and they have given their play a gratifying quantity of pukka sahib humor, if that appeals to one's taste. At one point a Blimpish army doctor (K. Lype O'Dell), appalled by the bloodsucking havoc this Transylvanian "foreigner" has wreaked on several young girls in the village, exclaims: "This is worse than the Sepoy Mutiny of '57!" Later a reporter-suitor (Samuel Maupin), who has fallen desperately in love with a sensually voluptuous prey (Alice White) of Dracula's, feels compelled to dispatch her with an offstage revolver shot: "You could have had me, my darling, but you cannot have England."

Campiness is not intrusive, however, and the play moves with the brisk tempo and sustained suspense of a good detective story. Called in to solve the Dracula case, Michael Burg, as a Dutch psychologist, manages to create a deft blend of Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes, strangely driven by a troubled Christian conscience. Christopher Bernau's Dracula is not as dramatically or mesmerically imposing as Frank Langella's, but when he swoops on his chosen lady's neck, he dives with the lusty single-minded intensity of a seagull. Since that lady is the pert and provocative Giulia Pagano, it is relatively easy to understand why.

Both of these Dracula shows are delightful romps for sophisticates, children and the vampire elitists who belong to the 15-year-old Count Dracula Society. As for any astute Seventh Avenue clothier who gets a corner on the calf-length velvet cape market, he may make a bloodless killing.

T.E.Kalem