Before they took on Bram Stoker’s vampire count, co-writers Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen did Crime and Punishment: A Comedy – another title that speaks for itself. Here, Dracula is put through their humour wringer and comes out a pansexual bloodsucker, chasing anyone with a neck.
There are gender and genre inversions galore as Jonathan Harker (Charlie Stemp, good comic timing) treks up the Carpathian mountains to Dracula’s castle. Harker’s fiancee is now Lucy (Safeena Ladha) rather than Mina, who is turned into Lucy’s less eligible sister and played by Sebastien Torkia in ginger-ringleted wig.
In a production directed by Greenberg, Dracula (James Daly) makes quite an entrance in lace midriff top and leather trousers, with the ripped bare muscles of an underworld hottie. He is bedroom-eyed and playful, in the mould of Rocky Horror’s Frank-N-Furter.
It is a shame then that the story does not manifest the same danger and allure in his wooing of Lucy and flirtations with Harker. None of it is truly transgressive, and his status as a sexual outsider and chaotic force is neutered by the lightness of the comedy. The script ping-pongs into earnestness too, with warnings about time and the torments of immortality.
Daly is still a charming stage presence and his Byronic, gym-bunny twist on Dracula is amusing if one-note. There is lots of larking and some funny physical gags, although the scripted jokes can be less than pin-sharp: a dated gag about dentistry references Janet Street-Porter while Harker has two cousins called Mary and Shelley.
In its gender reversals, the show has the rambunctious, good-natured feel of a gothic panto. Van Helsing is a German doctor and bluestocking, played twinklingly by Torkia. It is not radical or innovative, but it is fun.
Tijana Bjelajac’s set design, featuring luminous bat-shaped wings, bears the look of a wonky 1980s nightclub. Disco beats are mixed with claps of thunder and cracks of lightning. DIY special effects give it charm: cans sprayed by actors in place of a smoke machine when Dracula walks on, puppetry and ventriloquism by Stemp who carries off the comedy nicely as a whole.
The five-strong cast juggle multiple roles with particularly fast work by Dianne Pilkington as various characters including Lucy’s father. The performances are superb all round, full of fun and mischief, but the low-hanging jokes of the script short-change the actors’ talents. This comedy needs sharper fangs.
At Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 3 May
