Interview: SPENCER PLACHY of DRACULA at CLASSICAL THEATRE COMPANY

BroadwayWorld writer Brett Cullum got a chance to sit down with a vampire! Spencer Plachy is an actor in Houston, playing the lead role in DRACULA for the Classical Theater Company, which runs at the Deluxe Theater through October 26th. Spencer has toured with THE LION KING, playing Scar. He was also seen locally at the Alley Theater in, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, ROCK AND ROLL, THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, and CYRANO DE BERGERAC. He's done all sorts of regional theater, including roles in OKLAHOMA, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, and THE 39 STEPS. He was on stage with Orlando Bloom in a production of ROMEO AND JULIET. And if you are a Jane Austen fan and have attended Main Street Theater’s  CHRISTMASES AT PEMBERLEY, Spencer was in every single one of them. He is Houston’s Mr. Darcy. 

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Brett Cullum: Tell me a little bit about this version of DRACULA. Classical Theater Company is known here in Houston for doing… well… Obviously, the classics and the standards of literature. So, what version of the script is this?

Spencer Plachy: This is Classical's own commissioned adaptation. John Johnston’s [artistic director of CLASSICAL THEATRE] friend, Chris Iannacone, did the adaptation. They got together and decided they wanted to try to adapt it as faithfully to the novel as one possibly could try. Other stage versions of DRACULA have veered off in their own direction. For example, in the novel, Dracula appears as a very old man. Later, he appears as a younger man in his prime. And stage versions didn't really depict that dichotomy… that difference. You can't. Dracula appears in the same iteration throughout the play. That's one thing that we've really tried to tackle. 

Dracula's castle is the whole first quarter of the book, and in some versions, isn't even depicted on stage. They just jump to him as he appears in London. So we've approached it trying to adapt it as faithfully to the novel as we could possibly conceive.

The playwright, CLASSICAL, as a theater production company, and we, as a cast, have all drawn from the novel as much as we can. All of the dialogue you hear is pretty much verbatim, albeit some cut and paste where we necessarily had to make things more concise. But it's pretty much verbatim from the novel itself.

Brett Cullum: That has got to be a challenge because the novel is basically a novel of letters and diary entries. So, it's not always dialogue. 

Spencer Plachy: Yes. I like to compare it to the modern film genre of “found footage.” It's very, very much in that vein. It's collected documents, letters, diary entries, and some newspaper clippings, etc. In the middle of the story. I think Van Helsing and Mina are talking about compiling all those documents in order so we can understand what's transpired up until now that that conversation actually happens in the novel. So you're you're reading what they compiled. Translating that to a play or a movie has been done several times. Obviously, it presents many challenges.

Fortunately, the characters are making diary entries do write with dialogue being exchanged between the characters within their narrative. There's a lot of that to draw from because all of them do it, and all of them write that way.

Brett Cullum: I think the thing that's hard about the novel - it’s dense with many locations. And I think that is why you see so many people adapt and cut down. I mean, obviously, most famously, Hamilton and Deane adapted it for Bela Lugosi when it ran on Broadway. They eliminated all of Dracula's castle for the stage. Of course, they wisely added it back in for the movie. They couldn't change sets as easily back then, and they wanted to have everything cohesive and things like that. So I think there's been a lot of truncation of the novel, but I find it so unwieldy because so much happens! Just last year, they made an entire film about the last voyage of the Demeter! 

Spencer Plachy: That's one snippet of a chapter in the novel!

Brett Cullum: Right? So you've got so much there, so much material. So it's got to be a challenge to figure out how to get this down to two hours. 

Spencer Plachy: Oh, it definitely is. That has been challenging! We were making tweaks up until we were literally up and running. There are many, and we are confronting them, surmounting them, and meeting them on various levels. And for all of you purists, of course, we have to. We have to trim and tweak here and there.

Hopefully, you find little snippets, both in what the actors are doing, what they've done with the set, what they've done with the lighting, and the sound design. We've tried to nod to just as much as we can nod to as much as we can.

Brett Cullum: Dracula kind of has this ephemeral presence in the book that he doesn't have in many of the movies. I think Coppola probably got the closest to doing that with all of his iterations of Dracula. But he appears as different things to different people, and it's very mercurial. So I'll be fascinated to see how you guys address all of that. 

When you have to approach this iconic role, and I know that you did Scar in The Lion King, who is a great villain! But this one is one of the biggest bads of all time! So you're faced with the idea of how you put your stamp on this role? So what are some choices that you had to make to bring Dracula to life for you, Spencer?

Spencer Plachy: Again. I've tried to draw as much from the novel as I possibly could. I have seen a handful of film depictions. There's one thing in the novel that Van Helsing mentions a few times about how Dracula has what Van Helsing calls a child's brain. That being undead, you are reborn at that moment, and much of your experience with yourself and the world around you starts over. That process is slow and gradual and goes over many, many years. So, Dracula has matured very slowly, and I think that's what he means. I mean, mentally and emotionally. I have found that in my exploration of the character it manifests itself in kind of like a social awkwardness. I think Dracula awkwardly tries to socially make a joke, for example. It doesn't land! So, the child brain idea has stuck with me since I first read it. It was a very fascinating thought, I was reminded. Are you familiar with Ridley Scott's Blade Runner?

Brett Cullum: Oh, yeah, of course. I played it on a loop in my apartment all during my twenties! 

Spencer Plachy: So the Replicants in that only have this 4-year lifespan.

Brett Cullum: Nexus 6 models, yes.  

Spencer Plachy: Consequently, their emotions are really only toddlers. It's very subtle in the film. But but you can see it. I'm reminded of that, too, in Dracula's case. It's over a long time. It grows and matures, and he's been doing it for probably 900 years. I found some exploration in that. If anything, I'm saying makes sense… 

Brett Cullum: Yeah. A 900-year-old toddler, that makes sense.

Spencer Plachy: Yeah. An emotional toddler of sorts. Certainly.

Brett Cullum: What do you think is the biggest challenge to playing Dracula?

Spencer Plachy: We discovered Dracula has a big ego, a very big ego, and it's been it's been challenging. I could sit here and look at the guy from an objective perspective and say, “Why do you seem to have this? Why are you bothering being particular with your victims?” It's like they have to be young and beautiful or of a certain high society. Why don't you just go after anybody? Why are you being so particular? And I think that has to do with his ego and where he comes from in his real life before he became undead. He was very much a warrior, a conqueror, and of a certain social status. He wouldn't associate with the peasant. Wouldn't even touch him, and I think that's bled over into his undead existence to a degree.

Brett Cullum: Well, I think I've got something that may shed a little bit of light on that. Actually, there is a theory about DRACULA’s inspiration that says a lot about sexuality and society. Bram Stoker, the Irish novelist, has been rumored to have been a gay man who moved through high society circles. He wrote several romantic letters to Walt Whitman and was very close friends with Oscar Wilde. And let's face it. Who's Dracula’s first victim? It's Jonathan Harker.

So there is this sense of society with the people surrounding Bram Stoker - Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde. So it does kind of track that he would be attracted to high society, and I think there's a lot of and there's a lot of commentary about society, sex, and gender roles with DRACULA. So what do you think of that? 

Spencer Plachy: I think that's a broad-layered conversation. There's certainly a metaphor. Dracula is certainly a predator in the literal sense [in high society.] The victims he chooses in this tale are of youth and innocence, and he's trying to make his victims as decadent as he is. He lures his victims into his own decadence. Invites them into it. 

Brett Cullum: This book was written in 1897, right? And the character's just been immortal. It certainly wasn't the first book about vampires, but it's definitely the one that everybody identifies as the source of it. What do you think about the mythos that have made it so attractive to people? The tale has been adapted into over 200 films, and Dracula is only behind Sherlock Holmes in having work produced about him. 

Spencer Plachy: There are many layers of mystery that Bram Stoker put in on purpose. He doesn't tie everything up neatly. There are things intentionally left open as a mystery.

For example! How in the world is it that Dracula is communing with Renfield from across the ocean? I've deduced that they must have met somewhere in the past. But Dracula never mentions that and doesn't comment on that. How exactly did he get to Lucy? It's not really clear you can deduce that. It's probably through Renfield. There are all kinds of intentionally dropped mysteries.

Also, with what Van Helsing talks about about what we know about vampires. What are his strengths? What are his weaknesses? Van Helsing says that all we have to go on is legend, myth, and superstition.

So all of these doors and windows are left open for you, for your mind to just run and piece together. We as a culture kind of latch onto and relate to a lot of it because there's a lot of religious imagery that comes into play, and things that are next door to religion that we may or may not be vaguely familiar with. And something about that gives it a familiar cultural life, particularly in the West, that we've been associated with for hundreds of years. That part latches into and just gets into your subconscious in a lot of on a lot of levels.

Brett Cullum: Who was your favorite Dracula? What film did you see, look at, and go, “Wow!” 

Spencer Plachy: Well, to be straightforward. Gary Oldman's take is very campy, but in a way that really works in that film and certainly made it memorable. I don't think you could really top Leslie Nielsen, though, right? 

Brett Cullum: Okay. Leslie Nielsen in DRACULA DEAD AND LOVING IT is certainly the personification of a 900-year-old toddler. Right there.

Spencer Plachy: I watched Jack Palance do it, and it had it had its own interesting points. One of the things we talked about in the adaptation we worked on was that the adapters started to find sympathy for Dracula and make him a sympathetic character somewhere in the seventies. It's not really in the book. He's a mysterious predator; that's what he is! But they add this romantic element into a couple of film versions like the Dan Curtis, one with Jack Palance,  and of course the Coppola version. In both of those versions, Dracula recalls Lucy or Mina as if they're his past love reincarnated. So, it makes Dracula a sympathetic character. And that's not in the book. He's simply a pretty mysterious predator.

He spent 900 years or so learning some ways to interact with people, and he's recognized, at the very least, that this romantic allure, or this sexual allure that one can exploit. It certainly works to get prey close in the dark and in secret. It certainly works to his advantage. It's not about love, it's about dinner.

Brett Cullum: Well, the big question here, fangs or no fangs on stage? 

Spencer Plachy: I'm working with some fangs that work well. It does present a challenge with certain words. What I've discovered, and it's probably to my advantage, is that it is best that I am slow and deliberate. Be very deliberate about what you're saying. Don't rush; I don't think Dracula needs to rush about anything. My goal is to just sit in it and let the other characters come to me. I don't need to go get them. Let them come to me. 

Brett Cullum: Yeah, spider, meet fly. I wanted to ask you a little about yourself and get off this big vampire topic for a second. But how did you end up in this production? You know I see you a lot in Houston Theater. Are you based here?

Spencer Plachy: Currently. Yes, currently. Yes. That's a long story. My wife and I were in New York for ten years. I was working a lot, and then the world shut down, and things had to change. We were in New York trying to suss it out and consider getting our feet planted there again [after the pandemic], and for whatever reason, we never felt that the right thing to do was just to stay there. And so we decided, let's go back to Houston. That's where all of our family is. I went to Sam Houston State. Laura also did. That's where we met. There's a lot of good theater in Houston. In Houston, there is some solid stuff going on.

Brett Cullum: Good stuff like DRACULA at the CLASSICAL THEATRE through October 26th. I am so envious because of what a great role to play during Halloween. 

Spencer Plachy: It's very… It's very… well…. It's very juicy. There's a lot to chew on.

Brett Cullum: Literally.

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