With Halloween just around a trick or treat corner, it might be wise to check your supply of wooden stakes, mirrors, holy water and garlic cloves. You might also like to avoid spending a night in the company of anyone who fancies sleeping in a coffin and prefers Bloody Marys over water, coffee or tea. If you’re feeling especially courageous, Branford’s Legacy Theatre has just the terror filled and laughter driven entertainment for your screaming pleasure with the Connecticut premiere of “Dracula A Comedy of Terrors” by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen, with tongue in cheek and better yet fangs in neck, until Sunday, September 29.
Do you like a good ghost story, married to a farce, stuffed with timely current references and just plain fun and adventurous? Come watch a mild mannered realtor Jonathan Harker as he travels to Transylvania, with some degree of trepidation to get the signature and check from a new client, one ready to purchase four London locations, a mystery man of wealth, one Count Dracula. Harder has traveled, not without anxiety and angst, to a dark land to complete this lucrative deal.
His commissions are so huge, Harder is willing to abandon his new fiancee Lucy right before their engagement party planned by Lucy’s father Dr. Westfield, who manages a hospital for the mentally challenged. What follows is a maniacal and monumentally funny mishap when five talented miscreants portray a dozen characters, so pay attention to the antics and activities, the chases and the chaos, the mystery and the mayhem.
Mario Haynes’ single minded Dracula adds a new love fixation to his unquencible appetite for a liquid ruby elixir, while Jimmy Johansmeyer alternates between being a man-starved Mina, Lucy’s sister, to a medical expert diagnosing rare and uncurable disorders Add in Allison Miller as the lovely sought after Lucy who also plays Kitty, a servant, and the coach driver and her intended, the meek Harker, the bosun on the ship and the gravedigger all portrayed by Josiah Rowe and Stephanie Stiefel Williams who transforms herself seamlessly from Lucy’s father to his prime patient Renfield as well as to a Sea Captain who goes down with his ship in a storm.
You may need a score card as the action travels from Transylvania to London and beyond, but the laughter and lunacy will carry you along, under the scintillating direction of James Andreassi. For tickets ($26.50-51.50), call the Legacy Theatre, 128 Thimble Islands Road, Branford or online at LegacyTheatreCT.org. Performances are Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Watch for the 2024 Independent Film Festival on September 23-25, a children’s special The Carrot Salesman on September 28, a Sunday concert on October 6 with Howard McGillin of Phantom of the Opera fame, with John McDaniel on piano and the classic A Christmas Carol with James Andreassi as Scrooge from December 4-15.
Get ready to scream with terror and laughter as the inmates of the asylum are let out for a blood thirsty romp on the English moors.
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