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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 28, 2020

Dracula, or #YesAllMen

February 28, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the off-Broadway premieres of new stage versions of Dracula and Frankenstein. Here’s an excerpt.

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Ever since Hollywood put Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” in front of the cameras in 1931, the two great novelistic monsters of the 19th century have been yoked in the public mind. Now Classic Stage Company is producing newly written adaptations of both novels that have little in common save for their modest scale but nonetheless make for a natural, nicely contrasted pairing.

Kate Hamill’s “Dracula,” like her widely performed versions of “Little Women,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Vanity Fair,” takes a beloved 19th-century novel and turns it into a crisply wrought play with a good-sized cast (nine actors) and a feminist slant (the title page describes it as “a bit of a feminist revenge fantasy, really”). Conversely, Tristan Bernays’ “Frankenstein” is a miniaturization of the 1818 novel in which the parts are divided up between two actors, Stephanie Berry and Rob Morrison….

Here as in her previous plays, Ms. Hamill’s explicitly feminist perspective helps to put a fresh, theatrically potent spin on the novel. Among other things, she herself plays Renfield, Dracula’s creepy, blood-lusty acolyte, with Jessica Francis Dukes cast as Van Helsing, the take-no-guff-from-men vampire slayer (“You were expecting a withered old Dutch man?”) who spends the evening hunting down the title character (Matthew Amendt). This Dracula is pointedly described in the script as a “toxic predator,” a timely piece of characterization and one that Mr. Amendt brings to life—so to speak—with lip-smacking relish. (He reminded me at times of George Hamilton’s wonderfully funny Dracula in the 1979 film “Love at First Bite.”) While the show’s dead-serious premise is that all men are capable under the right circumstances of succumbing to the ever-present temptation to mistreat women, Ms. Hamill has plenty of fun proving her point…

Mr. Bernays’ “Frankenstein” is a tidy piece of storytelling, very well staged by Mr. Douglas, that does a surprisingly good job in its 80-minute span of suggesting the old-fashioned essence of Ms. Shelley’s novel. (I especially like the way in which both novel and play present Frankenstein’s monster as a genteel fellow whose glum utterances are sprinkled with such quaint usages as “withal.”) Would that the acting were more in keeping with the tone of the script, but Ms. Berry and Mr. Douglas both give naturalistic, unmistakably American performances, whereas Mr. Bernay’s approach to “Frankenstein” cries out for something larger than life….

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Read the whole thing here.

A video featurette about Dracula:

Replay: David Frost interviews Paul McCartney

February 28, 2020 by Terry Teachout

David Frost interviews Paul McCartney on the BBC on May 18, 1964:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Peter de Vries on universal literacy

February 28, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“If there’s one major cause for the spread of mass illiteracy, it’s the fact that everybody can read and write.”

Peter de Vries, The Tents of Wickedness

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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