‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ Team Up in NYC—With Mixed Results, and ‘Happy Birthday Doug’ Tells Gay Truths
“Dracula” and “Frankenstein”
How to make Dracula both very funny and also politically serious and emotionally piercing? Kate Hamill has figured that dramatic knot out brilliantly in her reimagined Dracula for the #MeToo era, directed by Sarna Lapine (playing alongside Frankenstein—nice idea—at CSC to March 8). In Hamill’s retelling, set on a sparse stage with sheets, atmospheric lighting and just the odd chair, Hamill has made Dracula into a mischievous and also deadly serious feminist fable.
Here, Dracula (Matthew Amendt) is as swaggering and louche as you might imagine, and his initial quarry, Jonathan Harker (a hapless Michael Crane) callow and suggestible. Dracula wants to seduce him, and also seduce him into badness.