Cheesy Christmas movies are a wintertime comfort staple, but where is the feel-good Halloween romance? The love stories that are part sap, part camp, told against a backdrop of vampires, candles, and blood? Look no further than Penfield Players’s “The Brides of Dracula” directed by Andrea Daskiewicz, playing through Nov 9.
“The Brides of Dracula” is a Sapphic remix of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire tale, written by Rochester native Jessica Wienecke and current resident Hope Kollarik (who also stars as Lucy). The script is engaging and well-crafted, an unabashedly woman-centered, queer Victorian gothic fantasy.
Jonathan Harker, played by Bolan Graham as a good-natured archetypal hero, visits a castle in Romania for a business deal with the legendary Dracula, brought perfectly to life by José Ismael Ortiz with an ominous stance and the iconic accent. When Jonathan shares a picture of “my girls” — his fiancé Mina and his sister Lucy — he unintentionally piques Dracula’s interest. Dracula traps Jonathan and attempts to brainwash him into inviting Mina and Lucy to the castle to join his collection of brides.
These brides, all turned into vampires by Dracula, have formed a trauma-bonded sisterhood. There’s sweet Sorana (Amanda Kish), youthful Nastazja (Jesika Barnes), distraught Teodora (Alice Mezhibovsky), surly Daciana (Shawnda Urie) and their commanding mother figure Alexandrina (Kathy Coughenour). They’re hungry, and looking to feed on Jonathan.
Meanwhile, Mina (Jane Farrell) confides in Lucy (Hope Kollarik) that she is settling for Jonathan because marriage should be about convenience and comfort rather than passion. Lucy is aghast; she has turned down three male suitors because she wasn’t madly in love with any of them. Both Farrell and Kollarik convey a prim, upper class Victorian sensibility as they insist they don’t need men when they have each other. They also hold each other’s hands repeatedly. Friendly platonic affection, or a love scandalous for Victorian times that must be confined to subtext?
Local vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, played with great zest by Spencer Hughes, overhears them talking about Dracula and invites himself on their trip to rescue Jonathan. The plot follows the quest to bring down Dracula, but is equally concerned with Lucy and Mina coming to terms with their feelings for each other.
Staged in the Penfield Community Center’s gymnasium auditorium, Daszkiewicz’s direction makes good use of a challenging space. The show opens in the dark, with a chorus of Dracula’s brides complaining “I’m so hungry” surrounding the audience. The set design by Meghan Brede and Nick Daskiewicz includes the interior of the castle and a bedroom onstage, as well as an extended platform in front of the stage to indicate when scenes are set at inns away from Dracula’s Castle.
The production relishes in dark, Gothic dreariness. The sound design by Ted Wenskus adds a layer of spooky transition music, howling wolves, and creaking gates. The costumes, designed by Shelly Jo Stam, evoke the upper class late 19th century while maintaining a consistent color scheme of beiges, browns, and blues. In contrast, Dracula’s brides are decked out in black and red corsets and flowy sleeves, like they shop at the Romanian equivalent of Hot Topic. Not all elements are successful — the lighting design by William DiGiacco is jarring, especially in a dimly lit flashback scene. The set transitions between scenes are too leisurely for a two-and-a-half hour show.
For the most part, the production succeeds in portraying a fantastical, over-the-top twist on its source material. The show is not trying to be subtle. Shows aiming for subtlety usually don’t culminate in multiple fencing sword fights (choreographed by Eva Sarachan-Dubay).
The play wears its “women’s empowerment” heart on its sleeve, featuring women who explicitly take control of their lives and the men who quickly learn to eschew toxic masculinity to support them. Is it heavy-handed and on the nose? Sure, but that’s par for the course when dealing with sharp-toothed men with capes living in creepy castles.
When the patriarchy brings fresh horrors every day, this play offers an escape to a world where a group of loving, fierce women can topple a creepy old man.
“The Brides of Dracula” plays through Nov. 9. More info and tickets here.
Katherine Varga is a contributor to CITY.
This article appears in Oct 1-31, 2024.
