Theatre
A Dracula spoof to enjoy, but no fangs for my seat ★★★
Excellent music and the jokes come thick and fast. I just wish I could have seen what was happening centre stage!
December 10, 2025 11:45
Excellent music and the jokes come thick and fast. I just wish I could have seen what was happening centre stage!
December 10, 2025 11:45Every trip to the theatre is undertaken in the hope of coming away with a lasting memory. The opening night of this Dracula spoof, the brainchild of Whose Line Is It Anyway? creator Dan Patterson, is no different, of course.
The show adapts Bram Stoker’s classic novel into a jukebox musical sung a cappella style, a seemingly random hybrid of horror, comedy and close-harmony singing that like many a mashup actually works rather well. But only as far as I could tell.
The reason for this equivocation is something entirely unrelated to the talent on stage and completely related to what for me will frustratingly be the lasting memory of this show. We will come to it later, but let us for now call it B36.
In the meantime it is worth noting that Dracula has always lent itself to send-up and puns. The most recent example was the off-Broadway hit Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors, which made its UK premiere at The Menier Chocolate Factory earlier this year.
Patterson’s one has what that that show was missing, music. Though it lacks the wit and invention of its American counterpart, even some of the gags overlap. Still, the score, which is comprised of mostly 1980s pop and soul, is subtly crowbarred into the action by co-writers Patterson and director Jez Bond, the Park’s founder and artistic director. The excellent singing, which is tighter than a drum, is backed by virtuoso beatboxer Alexander Belgarion who not only lays down rhythms but sound effects from machine guns to the flapping wings of a random bat. Or was it a pigeon?
Jokes come thick and fast and the knowing and wry tone is well set by the glint of Stephen Ashfield’s hapless Harker, the estate agent who is sent to Transylvania to close a deal with Ako Mitchell’s cloaked Count.
But as far as the action is concerned I can only report that it sounded entertaining enough if the laughter from the first night audience is anything to go by.
However because Bond’s direction seats a cast member downstage with back to the audience in front of my seat – the aforementioned B36 – for most of the show I only glimpsed what was happening centre stage.
What I can report is that there is some excellent singing, especially by Keala Settle, whose version of Cindi Lauper’s True Colors, which was a much-needed aural high of the evening.
By all means buy a ticket for the music. But for the plot and often visual gags best to avoid B36.
Dracapella
Park Theatre
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