Fine Acting but a Tired Tale in ‘Dracula’ at the Old Globe

“Dracula” just won’t die.

Not the legend anyway. As the Old Globe Theatre tackles Steven Dietz’s 1995 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s century-old novel, what fascinates more than the show itself is why the myth keeps coming back to suck the blood from our collective imagination.

Why does this vampire tale and its age-old suggestion of good versus evil, clean versus unclean, continue to frighten and titillate the senses? What does that say about us, anyway?

Under the direction of Mark Rucker in his Old Globe debut, the key to the appeal seems to be spectacle--immense theatricality for its own sake. Blood does not simply pour here, it spurts like a geyser. Coffins rise and fall through a haze of smoke billowing from trap doors in David Jenkins’ eerily suggestive set. A tortured Renfield (Enrico Colantoni) is lifted, writhing, high in the air and dropped in an immense clanging cage of the asylum. Eerie music wails as wolves howl, winds whip and gates crash, sounds melting into the haze of Michael Gilliam’s startling lighting effects.

Andrew Lloyd Webber would probably have a time composing music for a story as big-themed and visual as this. As it is, Michael Roth’s original music and sound design are big and meaty enough for a co-starring role.

The Old Globe, as always, puts on a show with impeccable professionalism. The cast, featuring Reg Rogers as a languid, world-weary, seductive count, is charismatic and affecting. And yet, despite the fine ensemble, the newness of Dietz’s version and his lush and lovely flair for the rich turn of phrase, there is a sense that “Dracula” may finally be getting a bit dated.

The story’s credibility requires a certainty in absolute good versus absolute evil that a more complex, multicultural world may question now. Non-Christians have probably always been skeptical, if not offended, by the waving of crucifixes, rosaries and holy water to ward off evil.

But even those who want to plug modern bad guys into the equation may have run out of candidates after the end of Cold War witch hunts. The late 1970s Broadway revival starring Frank Langella as a sexy bloodsucker seems dated, too--a result of fears following the sexual revolution, an equation of Eros with death that reached its tragic apex in the 1980s with the AIDS epidemic.

But, ironically, what may give “Dracula” its biggest local chill is the San Diego Opera’s recent world premiere of “The Conquistador,” set at the time of the Mexican Inquisition. There we realize how pernicious this mythology can be, as tormentors destroy innocents while mouthing the same pious phrases about torturing people in order to save their souls.

It makes you wonder if there’s something pernicious to this legend that makes it deserve a stake in its heart en route to its final rest.

* “Dracula,” Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego. Ends April 20.