The Fiasco At the Belasco

DRACULA: THE MUSICAL
It's something special when you're given a reason to use the words "ennui" and "flying vampires" in the same sentence. In that regard (pull-quote ahead), DRACULA: THE MUSICAL is something special!

Ham-fistedly directed, ham-handedly acted, and ham-bonedly written, DRACULA is the kind of spectacular, nonsensical mess that would transcend its incompetence into must-see status if it weren't so fucking boring. Special effects should be, well, special, and when an entire show rides on the visual of actors "flying" on cables, best not to overuse that effect. Yet for some reason, Dracula (Tom Hewitt), or rather Stunt Dracula (Who Knows?), floats across the stage for no reason during set changes. Set changes!!

Oh, and the poor actresses who play the paper-thin roles of Lucy and Mina (Kelli O'Hara and Melissa Ericco) - never has there been nudity more unnecessary and sad. And why would this all-male creative team force their two female leads to bare it all? Well, something has to distract the audience from the gasping dearth of anything truly worthwhile.

Frank Wildhorn seems less interested in winning a Tony than fully embodying the word "generic." Every song in the show blends seamlessly into the rest, creating the effect of one long bad song rather than the twenty or so bad songs the audience actually has to bear. And the lyrics, from co-book writers Don Black and Christopher Hampton, border on self-parody. Awkward metaphors have never made anyone seem sinister.

By early in Act II when the still-living cast members are crouching cartoonishly behind a coffin waiting for the now undead Lucy to reenter her crypt, the audience's bewildered stares shift to stifled giggles and finally to full-out belly laughs as Bart Shatto, in the role of Quincey Morris, the walking Texan stereotype masquerading as a character, drawls lines like, "Why I'll tell ya, killin' this vampire is gonna be harder 'n shootin' fish in a barrel."

Des McAnuff, who staged the complicated The Who's Tommy brilliantly, has crammed the small Belasco stage with so many ugly, plastic set-pieces (mostly a random and dull assortment of doors that spring out of the stage floor), that the too-few cast members seem at times either annoyed or in fear for their lives as they dodge the constantly shifting "suggested environments." And while McAnuff's decision to put chorus girls in fake moustaches and beards to play craggly seamen is laughable, his decision to focus on cheap parlor tricks rather than any sense of character development or emotional connection is inexcusable.

Ultimately, Bram Stoker's Dracula is a story of seduction and desecration, a vivid exploration of the titillation and consequences of darkness. Sadly, DRACULA: THE MUSICAL is only the story of some actors flying around in a theater - although there are plenty of tits and darkness.

Here's hoping critics and audiences alike nail this bloodless fiasco for the cynical stunt show it really is, and drive it straight back to the tour from whence it came.