Over the past five years, Old Globe audiences have grown accustomed to the literary comedies of playwriting partners Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen, first with “Ebenezer Scrooge’s Big San Diego Christmas Show” in 2019, and last year’s world premiere of “Crime and Punishment, a Comedy.”
Now comes Greenberg and Rosen’s “Dracula, a Comedy of Terrors,” which opened Thursday at the Globe in its West Coast premiere.
Like its predecessors, “Dracula” is a zippy, one-act comedy staged in the round with a small cast who play multiple characters via fast-paced costume and wig changes and amusing bits of puppetry.
Of the duo’s three plays staged at the Globe, “Dracula” is by far the funniest. The script run out of steam in its final 15 minutes, but the performances, costumes and director Gordon Greenberg’s clever feats of stagecraft make it a surprise-filled and highly entertaining show.
The play is based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 epistolary gothic vampire horror novel “Dracula.” Greenberg and Rosen’s script changes some of the situations, characters, genders and locations, but it’s still the mostly recognizable Dracula storyline — albeit funny rather than scary.
Most of the play’s action plays out near London, England, where the blood-sucking Romanian count Dracula has purchased a home and begins stalking his victims, including Lucy, the fiancée of bland real estate salesman Jonathan Harker.
George Krissa leads the cast as the sexy, self-absorbed Dracula, who in this play is a leather-clad, bare-chested bisexual hedonist. As Harker, the talented physical comedian Brady Dalton Richards is Dracula’s polar opposite, a milquetoasty coward. Both vie for the attention of Lucy, played by the versatile and expressive Gizel Jiménez, who secretly wishes Jonathan had some of Dracula’s boldness and sex appeal.
Drew Droege walks away with most of the play’s best lines and laughs as Lucy’s sex-starved sister Mina and the goose-stepping German vampire-hunter (Ms.) Van Helsing.
And Linda Mugleston’s magical quick-change transformations between her characters of Lucy’s father, asylum director Westfeldt, and the bug-eating asylum patient Renfield provide some of the play’s biggest surprises.
The play, which runs a little over 90 minutes, is set in its original Victorian era, but Greenberg’s production has a modern rock ‘n’ roll sensibility, with lively contemporary music by Victoria Deiorio and nightclub-likeclub neon lighting by Rob Denton on a minimalist set by Tijana Bjelajac.
One of the play’s best features is Tristan Raines’ kooky costumes, particularly Van Helsing’s frumpy Germanic dress and pretzel-and-bon-bon-style wig, and Dracula’s skin-baring back-lace vests.
“Dracula, a Comedy of Terrors” arrives just in time for Halloween season, but it’s not a spooky show. Instead it provides some of the biggest laughs I’ve heard from a local theater audience all year long.
‘Dracula, a Comedy of Terrors’
When: 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 3.
Where: Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, the Old Globe, 1613 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego
Tickets: $45 and up
Phone: (619) 234-5623
Online: theoldglobe.org