Arizona Theatre Company’s ‘Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors’ Definitely Doesn’t Suck

The Dracula legend adapts well to zany comedy; the movies Love at First Bite and Dracula: Dead and Loving It are just two examples. But Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, Arizona Theatre Company’s production playing at Tempe Center for the Arts through June 7, is arguably sillier than either of these, and just as much fun.

Directed by Gordon Greenberg from a script by Greenberg and Steve Rosen, DACOT is a furiously paced, intermission-free burlesque of Bram Stoker’s vampire yarn. It’s played by a cast of five – tall, insolently smirking Christopher James Stevens as the cocksure Count, and two women and two men as all the other characters, gender be hanged: Paul Vogt exuberantly plays Drac’s love-starved victim Lucy and also the crusty vampire hunter Van Helsing, as a woman in Frau Blücher-ish drag. Renfield and Lucy’s father, however, are both played as men by Kelly Bashar. The scarcity of actors is turned to the show’s advantage; some of the best gags are built on how stretched-thin the cast gets. They even resort to puppetry where needed.

Although Greenberg and Rosen manage some clever wordplay, DACOT isn’t about high-flown language. The humor is sketch-comedy heavy-handed and raunchy – sometimes self-consciously raunchy. But the show is exhilarating as an exercise in sheer theatrical speed, technical precision and creative staging. Tijana Bjelajac’s atmospheric set and Rob Denton’s sturm-und-drang lighting effects help propel the actors through their whirlwind paces, and here and there the drive is slackened for a few seconds, just long enough to allow for a moment of humanity to peep out.

I particularly enjoyed the transitions where, to cover a scene change, one of the actors would come out and dance for a few seconds in a spotlight, go-go style. It brought a delightful and appropriate flavor of ’70s TV, like Laugh-In or Love, American Style. Or something in that, um, vein.

For tickets and details, go to atc.org.