Body of Play All in Fun

Maybe it started with George Hamilton, but it’s been a long time since vampires were strictly ghoulish. The straight-ahead bloodiness of a “Nosferatu” is long gone; now, as with the violent, hip but oh-so-vulnerable vampires in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the undead are undeniably confused.

Count Zescu, hero of the silly musical comedy “A Vampire Reflects” at Ventura Court Theatre, continues the trend. He can’t help being dashingly handsome, drawing the ladies to him like a really great men’s fragrance, and he can’t help being funny. Hamilton would love this guy.

Of course, it helps having the kind of witty repartee that writer Frank Semerano serves up. The Count (Anthony De Longis) finds himself far from his Transylvanian home in the SoCal desert next to the equivalent of Edwards Air Force Base in the 1950s, and he bemoans it in one of a few songs (music by Gary Stockdale, lyrics by Semerano and Stockdale) sprinkled through Act I. He finds himself the ridiculous object of puppy love by swooning teen Mattie (Casie Fox), who reminds him at one point, “but you’re immortal.”

“And the prospect,” the Count replies, “is beginning to depress me.”

Seemingly stuck in meaningless exile with few available necks to bite--he can’t even get it together to fully transform himself into a wolf--the Count finds a mission: The base is doing nasty things with an experimental bomb and the local bat habitat, and we know how close a vampire feels to his bats.

He aims to save the bats and charms his way into Col. Puddlepont’s (Dan Payne) home. Alas for the Count, there are more women ready to swoon at the lip of his cape, like Mrs. Puddlepont (Lissa Layng Reynolds, replacing Joy Ellison).

One of the funnier touches in a script that relentlessly dishes the one-liners is introducing a real ghoul who makes the Count look like a pushover: Dr. Gunter (Miguel Marcott). He is the prototypical ex-Nazi now in the U.S. government’s employ but whose real agenda is to terrorize the base. In a typical sign of how this show blends the silly with the political, Gunter was able to elude Nazi hunters by changing his name from Bunter.

He also tried to kill the Count 15 years before, which now is making life awfully complicated for the Count. But by the time the song-free Act II is over, Gunter has been reduced to experimenting on himself, loyal lieutenant-turned-Major Crisis (Alex Cobo) has freed himself from turning into a human time bomb and Mattie drags the Count--who declares that “people who don’t eat people are the luckiest people in the world”--away for further adventures.

The cast, under Vaughn Armstrong’s energetic, campy direction, has a ball with the nonsense, not only because it provides the kind of over-the-top theatrics every actor would kill for but because of the dialogue’s Preston Sturges-like locomotion and the story’s underlying spoof of Cold War attitudes. The physical production--Ivonski’s set full of swinging doors, Kristine Wright’s goofy costumes, Nathan Sykes’ garish lights and Jaymes Wheeler’s special effects--is as modest as the show’s budget. The real fun is the rat-a-tat-tat talk and punning and sympathizing for an obscure Count who complains that “Dracula just had a better press agent.”

BE THERE

“A Vampire Reflects,” Ventura Court Theatre, 12417 Ventura Court, Studio City. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Ends Oct. 31. $10. (818) 763-0245. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.