Playwright Focuses on Real-Life Dracula’s Reign as the ‘Impaler’

Before the current film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” there was Stoker’s fin de siecle novel “Dracula.” Both fiction. But there was a real Dracula, and he was not the slippery monster of Stoker’s imagination, even though his inspiration came from the original.

He was called Vlad Dracula (pronounced Dra-coo-lya ), or more familiarly by his 15th-Century contemporaries, Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler). It’s this original, real-life monster who is the subject of Ron Magid’s “Dracula Tyrannus,” which opened this month at the Tiffany Theatre.

Magid’s fascination with Vlad Dracula’s story began when, at the age of 5 or so, he viewed the Tod Browning film version of Stoker’s book, with Bela Lugosi.

The vampire, and the “impaler” from whom he sprang, became a lifelong study for the 31-year-old playwright. Among other things, his fascination with Dracula and the whole horror genre led to his writing on special effects and related subjects for publications such as American Cinematographer.

Magid says Stoker, a professional theater manager, himself got the idea for his novel from a pamphlet written during Dracula’s lifetime.

“Dracula,” Magid says, “was a very revered figure in his own land, and in all of Europe, really. People read the pamphlet about him avidly. It was probably the first bestseller.” Many monuments were erected to him in Eastern Europe.

In fact, Magid says, Dracula was “probably the most important historical figure in Europe in the 15th Century. He single-handedly stopped the Turks from reaching Rome, and made the world safe for Christianity.”

Vlad Dracula was Prince of Wallachia, a small principality on the southern border of Romania, next-door, incidentally, to the principality of Transylvania. Dracula had a solution to solve the problem of invading Turks.

He impaled them, an ancient torture in which a stake is inserted in the rectum, pushed through the torso and out the mouth. His success against the Turks, and his infamy, derives from the fact that he did it to more than 100,000 people, eventually, in madness, even the citizens of Wallachia.

“It’s the story of a man,” Magid says, “who believes he is one thing, and through the course of the story finds out he is something else. He believes he is doing God’s will. At the moment of his death he realizes he has been serving the devil. The horrifying thing about writing this play is that I had to find in myself both the darkness and the light, to create a character who could do these despicable things, and yet somehow believe the people could love him, and to see himself as always right.”

It was also difficult to condense the story into 36 scenes, involving 18 actors, 15 of whom play multiple roles. Even more strenuous was re-creating Dracula’s world on the small stage of the 99-seat Tiffany Theatre. The task was made easier by a top-flight design team, including Christopher Gilman, one of the production’s producers, who was also in charge of special effects. Gilman’s recent special effects credits include “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” “Hoffa,” “Batman Returns” and “Hook.”

Also on the team is costume designer Marilyn Madsen Brands, who has been involved in several projects with Gilman, and is working on her first stage production following costume credits on the film version of Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers,” CBS’s “Sinatra” and NBC’s “A Woman Named Jackie.”

“I found the script fascinating,” says Brands, adding that it was as compelling as her research on Wallachia and the 15th Century. “Costumes are well-documented for England, France and the Netherlands for that time period, but it was interesting to delve into Eastern Europe at that time.”

Having to adjust herself to a small-theater budget for the roughly 68 costumes required for the production was also a challenge, Brands says.

“You get more creative. I wound up making the hats for the Wallachian guards out of Naugahyde. The Turks were the most fun. They had incredible headgear. It was headdress heaven. I loved it.”

In spite of the bloody nature of Dracula’s career, director Jules Aaron says the special effects created by Gilman, including having Dracula rise magically out of a mound of skulls, should not put off the faint of heart.

“The suggestion of things that happen are hopefully quite terrifying,” Aaron says.

“Chris Gilman has helped to facilitate the violence onstage through the appearance of violence. The stage does not drip with blood.”

Aaron hopes that audiences, besides being entertained, will see the play’s message about how easy it is for a man proclaiming good to command respect while creating evil.

Magid definitely had this in mind when he began working on his script. “What’s so fascinating and horrifying,” Magid says, “is that the same war I’m discussing in the play, that took place in the 15th Century, is going on today, the war between Islam and Christianity. The names of the players have changed. Five hundred years have allowed the descendants of Dracula’s contemporaries to forget the atrocities he committed. They say, ‘Well, he stopped the Turks from getting to Rome.’ It’s like saying Hitler had a good idea in raising the self-esteem of the German people but, gee, it’s a shame he had to put all those people in ovens.”

Magid thinks a modern charismatic icon on the order of Dracula or Hitler could pop up at any time, leading to similar violence.

‘History,” Magid says, “tends to give a patina to these things that they don’t really deserve. When I really began to understand the currents of history, and to see how things happen again and again, separated by decades or centuries, it made me realize that what happened with Hitler and Vlad Dracula could happen again at any time. People are quick to forget. They are easily seduced.”

“Dracula Tyrannus,” 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Ends Feb. 28. $20 to $22.50; (310) 289-2999.