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REVIEWSVampire variations go for the jugular!The Orlando Weekly Like a vampire at a Bloody Mary brunch, the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's "Dracula" keeps coming back for more. Adapted from the Bram Stoker text by artistic director Jim Helsinger and performed by him, solo-style, in 1995 and 1996, the show essentially created the concept of the festival's fall season, leading to subsequent Halloween offerings like "Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus" and "The Woman in Black." Now that the festival's big Drac attack has been resumed by director April-Dawn Gladu and performer Christopher Patrick Mullen, we can all be reminded of the tradition's sturdy foundations. Shows like this aren't just a ton of Gothic fun: They're a rip-roaring reminder of how much we're entitled to expect from the theatrical arts. Seven years after the ungodly events that turned his veddy British life upside down, Jonathan Harker sits in his relic-strewn attic, poring through old diaries intended for one Bram Stoker. This conceit alone is immensely satisfying, entailing as it does the revitalization of a character once dealt a body blow by Keanu Reeves. But Mullen's suitably spooked Harker ain't half the story, Mum. As he reads, the old tale of soul-stealing horror unfolds anew, and Mullen is soon dashing with athletic zeal across scenic designer Bob Phillips' exquisite set, successively adopting and shedding the distinctive affects of the story's many dramatis personae. There's the Count, of course, plus Dr. Van Helsing, Mina Harker, Quincy Morris, Arthur Holmwood and the pathetic Renfield (a hint of Peter Ustinov in that one, I thought). Lighting crashes. Boards creak. Props spring forth to support the plot in the most unexpected of ways. And through it all, the timing is immaculate, Gladu not missing a chance to underscore Mullen's boundless yen for role-playing with the stings of Eric T. Haugen's atmospheric lighting and R. Andrew Turk's haunting sound. As he proved in the festival's Hamlet and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Mullen is a pro at conveying distraction, making him a natural conduit for Helsinger's fear-soaked script. And Gladu displayed a similar temperament with her direction of last year's "The Island of Dr. Moreau" -- which, if possible, was even more nerve-shattering than this current project. But in watching her "Dracula," I was struck most by the moments in which it transcended mere fright-mongering. From his first appearance, Mullen's Count is more than a mere repository of ancient evil. He's a bitter, vengeful and, yes, even sad old man raging in futility against the trappings of a world that is becoming increasingly alien to him. As Max Von Sydow said in "The Exorcist," we always learn something new about the enemy in these encounters -- even if it's only how well he'd fit in with the supper crowd at Morrison's. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Orlando Sentinel
Excerpts from review by By Elizabeth Maupin
Posted October 18, 2003
You wouldn't want to be Jonathan Harker, trapped in a ruined castle high above a precipice in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. Nothing in the castle is quite what he expected. Doors are locked. Walls swivel and turn into passageways. Strange figures appear and disappear, and hands reach out to claw at him in the night.
Better him than you, you might think. But the nightmarish confines of Castle Dracula are the making -- and now and then the unmaking -- of Dracula: The Journal of Jonathan Harker, the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's revisit to writer Jim Helsinger's one-man drama.
Christopher Patrick Mullen, who played a wonderfully unconventional Hamlet for the festival early last year, has succeeded Helsinger himself as the singular actor, and Mullen brings a goofy humor to the drama's mysterious first half. But it's the sinister sound and look and feel of the festival's Dracula that give you the creeps, and it's the anticipation of what foul thing might happen next that pulls you back for more.
Helsinger first performed his adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel for the festival at Halloween of 1995, when the theater was a makeshift space in the now demolished Winter Park Mall. The festival brought back the show, with minor revisions, the following fall, and presented it in the little Tupperware Theatre at the old Civic Theatre Complex, now Orlando Rep.
Seven years later Dracula is on the festival's own Goldman Theater stage, with direction by April-Dawn Gladu. The company's designers have gone to town, with every manner of sound, light, shadow, sleeve and cobweb contributing to the production's ominous feel. Once again, Helsinger has made slight changes in the script, but the change in actor adds a different dimension. Where Harker once was a hearty young man, now he's slight and innocent, and his earnestness makes you laugh for what you know is to come. Mullen has a gift, too, for the multiple characters he plays later on. But it's the increasingly frightened, increasingly gaunt-looking Harker whose anxiety commands the stage.
Scenic designer Bob Phillips has created an amazingly versatile set, an atticlike room fitted out with revolving walls, hidden traps, walls for climbing and enough old stuff -- picture frames, chairs, a globe, a suit of armor -- to suit a Transylvanian pack rat. Lighting designer Eric T. Haugen and sound designer R. Andrew Turk have collaborated on plenty of lightning, thunder and other bumps in the night, and costume designer Denise Warner has provided the requisite Victorian gentleman's attire, along with a grandiose embroidered robe for the Count... At a time when Halloween seems to have turned into blood and gore, a Dracula as delicious as this one puts your imagination back to work.
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Last Updated: 05/06/2007 Copyright Orlando Shakespeare Theater |
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