Dracula (Rob Thompson) and his brides! Photo by Stungun Photography.
Since emerging from its theatrical coffin three years ago, the Little 5 Points Rockstar Orchestra’s staging of Dracula: The Rock Opera has been seen in a few monstrous forms. While the music, a hybrid of Andrew Lloyd Webber-like majesty and classic rock power, has always been an important part of the production, it hasn’t been quite the focal point that it is in this Valentine’s Day weekend’s performances at 7 Stages.
Described by members of the cast as being akin to VH1 Storytellers or a plugged-in version of MTV Unplugged, Dracula: The Concert strips away some of the theatrics of previous performances for a more raw interpretation of the love-and-lust at the heart of Dracula. But these concert productions also serve as CD release parties for Dracula: The Rock Opera, the double-disc set of all the music (as well as some pretty cool packaging and photos) from the previous Dracula productions.
“It’s more to illuminate the rock ‘n’ roll side of it,” says co-creator Naomi Lavender, who portrays Mina Harker. “We’ve done the first act, we’ve done the full show and because this is a CD release party we’re taking it more to a concert level. It is a really good show, but it’s also really good music. It’s just really special because Bram Stoker was such a brilliant writer and we get to bring it to 2014. All of the lyrics are pretty much verbatim from the book with only a little bit of changes to make them rhyme or things like that. But for the most part they are lyrical on their own, straight from the book.”
In true rock ‘n’ roll fashion, there will still be some theatrics such as props and costumes from the rock opera production. Plus, there will be other insights into the making-and-progress of this ever-growing endeavor.
“With this concert version, we have some interludes with some funny stories from the production, some hopes for the future, people playing multiple roles, things like that,” says 7 Stages artistic director Heidi S. Howard. “We’re keeping it very simple because one of the things we don’t want to do is recreate what the production is because we’ll end up hurting it. We have some elements [from the original production] that we’ll have set around. Other than that, we’ve got a band, some stools and some microphones.”
“We enjoy the music, so it’s fun to get to play it and not have to act it out or be worried about all the other things,” says co-creator Rob Thompson, who stars as Dracula. “We get to just go out and be loose, sing the songs and have fun. We don’t even have the full cast, so we have some people singing other people’s parts. I sang most of these songs when I was writing them and we were doing our first rough recordings of them. So it’s fun for me to get to sing some of those parts again.”