Review: DRACULA, A COMEDY OF TERRORS, Menier Chocolate Factory

Vampires have always had that sexy je ne sais quoi. Whether they have ever been this sexy and this funny at the same time is a different question. Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen give Bram Stoker a run for his money with their sensational adaptation of the most famous of blood-suckers.

Dracula, a Comedy of Terrors instantly went viral on TikTok when it ran Off-Broadway, ranking up over seven million views for a single snippet of their trailer. This is the lovechild of Mel Brooks and Monty Python, a side-splitting, rib-tickling, neck-biting, hysterically racy show. Charlie Stemp, Dianne Pilkington, Safeena Ladha, and Sebastien Torkia join James Daly, who reprises his role to introduce a pansexual count who’s been alive too long to care about social niceties. You’ll be screaming with laughter.

Greenberg’s direction pays homage to traditional stagecraft in the silliest of ways. Mist and fog come from spray cans, while the actors meticulously scramble to tell their story with physical props and sound cues. Ironically, it’s a refreshing, utterly delightful approach that amps up a refined, in-your-face brand of humour. While the script is rude and unashamed, it manages to remain exceptionally sanitised - think sophisticated adult panto without the callbacks to the audience. The performance is risqué in many aspects, but it’s surprisingly clean fun. Transferring from the States, we guess the team tinkered with the text to contextualise the references for a British audience; they gave Dracula a timeshare in Bognor Regis and it works.

Charged with innuendos and pop culture, this is Nosferatu on steroids and Daly is only the first name in an explosive cast. He might have all the charisma and the sex appeal of a glam rock superstar, constantly striking a pose or giving us some very impressive cape action, but Dianne Pilkington is the real comic revelation. She is astonishing, indefatigable, as she handles her series of quick changes and all the role-hopping her track demands with pitch-perfect timing. In cahoots with Sebastien Torkia and his own array of cross-dressing, gender-bending shenanigans, she steals the scene. Dr. Westfeldt and Van Helsing have never been more cheeky or enthralling, and neither have Renfield nor Mina. 

The double and sometimes triple casting is woven into the production seamlessly, heightening the comedic tension and hyping up the theatricality of it all. Juxtaposing Daly’s pizzazz with Jonathan Harker’s nerdiness and weak constitution, West End darling Charlie Stemp is foil for each of his co-stars. He bumbles and wavers until he wins Lucy’s heart (let’s call it that) and everyone lives almost happily ever after. From defining vampirism as a pyramid scheme to pushing Dracula’s hypersexual nature into a bout of self-realisation, it’s all sheer fun. It’s a show that’s proud to be a comedy for comedy’s sake.

Neither the company nor the material take themselves too seriously at any moment in the 90-minute show, which is, ultimately, their winning point. The delicious in-jokes make it a recurring gag in itself; it’s unserious and unpretentious, the appropriate choice to forget the doom and gloom of the real world for a bit. A ferociously sexy one-laugh-a-minute campy romp

Dracula, a Comedy of Terrors runs at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 3 May.

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