'Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors' review — Bram Stoker's vampire classic becomes a fang-tastic high-camp spoof

Read our review of comedy Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors, now in performances at the Menier Chocolate Factory to 3 May.

The jokes come fast and furious in Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors, whose jokey title recalls Mel Brooks’s screen heyday with ticklishly named films such as Blazing Saddles and High Anxiety.

So it seems apposite that Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s comic knockoff of literature’s bloodthirstiest count should follow on at this address directly from the delirious revival of Brooks’s film-turned-stage-musical The Producers, itself set for a West End transfer.

To be fair, there are moments where one jape or another may leave you rolling your eyes as opposed to clasping your sides: a Janet Street-Porter quip early on seems a rather desperate way of proving to London audiences that material previously seen in the US and Canada has been rethought for this engagement.

But, doubling as director of his own script, Greenberg sends a terrific cast of five hurtling pell-mell across 90 very silly minutes, and one only wonders whether late-night performances might be in order here, so that patrons could arrive having had a drink or two by way of lubricant.

Ooo, er, did someone say lubricant? That in itself is indicative of the language fielded throughout, which trades heavily on sexual wordplay (“deliveries in the rear” is just one example), and starts pre-show with the ambient music pumped up to club level: are we at a theatre performance or a high-camp gig? The production lies somewhere in between.

The Canadian actor James Daly is the lone holdover from previous iterations, and he positively, um, vibrates with tongue-in-cheek narcissism accompanying varying degrees of undress. I half expected this leather-clad libertine to ask how glad we were to see him – co-opting Glinda’s opening salvo from Wicked. (The brilliant Dianne Pilkington, the standout among the Dracula company, was herself a Glinda back in the day.)

“A hot guy takes off his shirt,” or so we’re informed at the start, and Daly’s Dracula proceeds to do just that, revealing a bare, well-chiselled chest that is soon reducing those in his fang base to varying states of libidinous confusion.

You’ll recognise the emphasis on quick changes and sound cues from such disparate sources as The 39 Steps and Mischief’s output, and there are some ace sight gags involving wigs, staircases and the like in which Pilkington’s whiplash-fast change of roles more than once drew applause: within actual seconds, she morphs from Lucy’s stiff-backed dad to the creepy Renfield, Dracula’s nutter of a servant.

Bram Stoker’s story shifts between Transylvania and, you may recall, Whitby, and finds Dracula being courted at the start by Jonathan Harker, the English solicitor here reimagined as a gormless estate agent. That role falls to an exceedingly game Charlie Stemp: the musical theatre alum of Crazy for You and Mary Poppins is here given a tap routine or two to remind us of his usual realm of employment, even as he is clearly having a blast playing, um, straight man to an increasingly lusty Dracula. (At one point, Stemp's ventriloquist chops come into play as well.)

Others in the Count’s sanguineous orbit include Safeena Ladha as Jonathan’s intended, the Oxford-educated Lucy, and Sebastien Torkia is a large-eyed hoot as, amongst others, a gender-flipped Van Helsing who shows up hair piled high with braids.

Tijana Bjelajac’s set is flanked by the requisite batwings, and I can well imagine the material being too batty by half for some. Resist its go-for-broke loopiness, and the play, performed without an interval, may seem a long sit. But those who go along for the ride will encounter the best scene of sex in a horse-drawn carriage you are likely ever to see.

Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors is at the Menier Chocolate Factory to 3 May. Book Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors (Photos by Matt Crockett)