Old Tale, New Blood

Yes, he’s bloodsucking and seductive. But can he sing? That’s the question facing Dracula watchers these days, as the famously thirsty Count makes his way to the musical stage.

Deep in the subterranean caverns of a rehearsal room on the UC San Diego campus, the toothsome lady-killer stalks his prey. There are the inevitable talismans--crucifixes, cloaks and a crypt, holy water and horror. Yet familiar as he may be, this vampire is a new man, in a new milieu where Victorian gothic meets 21st century stagecraft.

“Dracula, The Musical” premieres next Sunday at La Jolla Playhouse, staged by La Jolla Playhouse artistic director Des McAnuff. It’s composed by Frank Wildhorn, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, and it stars Tom Hewitt.

The castle-dweller is in good company. Director McAnuff has steered many musicals here before, and taken several--”Big River,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “The Who’s Tommy”--on to Broadway and Tony Awards. Yet this is the first time the show has been booked in New York before even opening in La Jolla: “Dracula, The Musical” is slated for the Broadway Theatre in New York in the spring.

Black and Hampton, the librettist team on “Sunset Boulevard,” are revered in their fields, with credits too numerous to mention. Wildhorn is, by his own admission, “the kid” on the team. He has had great success as a pop songwriter and record producer, and is known in the theater world for “Jekyll & Hyde,” “The Scarlet Pimpernel” and “The Civil War.”

Further, the funding is coming from a consortium of three of the heaviest hitters in the business. A total of $1.4 million for the $2.5-million production of “Dracula, The Musical” is coming from Dodger Theatricals, Clear Channel Entertainment and the Nederlander Organization.

It’s not surprising that Dracula would draw such a crowd. Many have been attracted to the titillating and clearly sexual subject matter of the legend, and the Stoker novel in particular.

“Even though the characters are very, very British, there’s this tension everywhere,” says McAnuff, seated outside the playhouse offices in a hilltop grove of eucalyptus trees. “Stoker was very much struggling with this because he was so much a 19th century man, and clearly a death sentence had been cast on Victorian England by the time he was writing this.

“I think there’s been a tendency to parody it or to not trust it,” McAnuff adds. “We all felt that if wereally tapped into what made the book powerful, that really would translate on stage.”

Bram Stoker’s gothic novel, published in 1897, is based on vampire legends and central European tales of the “nosferatu,” or undead. It has become a staple of Western literature and virtually a genre unto itself.

Dracula, a mysterious and supernaturally seductive count from Transylvania, must suck the blood of innocent victims to sustain himself. The Stoker novel is written largely in the form of journal entries by the main characters, including Jonathan Harker, a young man who comes to the Count’s castle; Harker’s fiancee, Mina, whom Dracula desires; Dracula’s victim Lucy; and various others who seek to stop the Count.

Apart from the many films, the best-known contemporary stage version was the Broadway revival starring Frank Langella in the 1970s.

There have been a number of other stage versions since, including Steven Dietz’s 1995 adaptation of the Stoker novel. Coincidentally, that version, directed by Mark Rucker, was also produced recently in San Diego, at the Old Globe Theatre in 1997. It was not a musical version, although the substantial original music and sound design by Michael Roth made it seem close to one.

A musical version was staged in Stratford, Canada, four years ago, which one of the producers of the playhouse’s “Dracula, The Musical” acknowledges sending people to scout. In a somewhat different vein, plans for a spring 2002 Broadway opening of “Dance of the Vampires,” starring Michael Crawford, were postponed until later next year.

Many productions presented at nonprofit regional theaters these days are mounted with the help of outside funds from commercial producers. It’s commonly known as enhancement money. “You do a musical of this size these days, and it takes help from somewhere,” explains Michael David, president of New York-based Dodger Theatricals, which is the lead producer on this project.

The producers’ motive is a chance to see the potential stage property on its feet before investing the many more millions it takes to bring a show to Broadway. “You do them to prevent the $10-million mistake,” David explains.

Both the budget and the amount of the enhancement are comparatively large. For the playhouse, which has an annual operating budget of about $9.5 million, this is one of the largest enhancements ever. “It’s roughly the same as what we got for ‘How to Succeed’ or ‘Jane Eyre,”’ managing director Terrence Dwyer says. “But we didn’t get that much for ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie.”’

What helps make this particular package comfortable is that the parties have worked together before. Dodger Theatricals and McAnuff go back nearly 30 years, and Dodger has backed four previous shows at La Jolla, including “How to Succeed in Business,” “Shout Up a Morning,” “Big River” and “The Who’s Tommy.” Clear Channel (then SFX) was also a producer of “The Who’s Tommy,” and of Wildhorn’s “Jekyll & Hyde.”

Similarly, the notion of commercial producers as wholly detached from the creative genesis of shows doesn’t apply here. “There is this impression that good work happens around the country, and then men with cigars go shopping and see what they want to pick up,” David says. “Just because we do this for a living doesn’t mean we don’t have a good idea once in a while.”

Indeed, the idea of a musical “Dracula” is something a number of the artists and producers claim to have had on their minds for quite some time, independent of one another.

McAnuff first had the notion some six or seven years ago. “I met with a couple of composers, and from time to time I would mention the project,” he recalls. “Then when I got really consumed with doing movies, I didn’t give it too much more thought.”

Unbeknownst to McAnuff, Wildhorn had long been interested in the same idea. “I actually thought of doing ‘Dracula’ when I was a student at USC in 1979-80 when I saw Frank Langella do the play,” Wildhorn recalls. “But it wasn’t the time to do it because the play had just come out. So instead I found this little book called ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ and that then took 17 years of my life to get it to Broadway.”

Wildhorn’s “Jekyll & Hyde”--arguably the work for which he’s best known--premiered at Houston’s Alley Theatre in 1990 and arrived on Broadway in 1997 for a four-year stay, closing in January of this year. It has had several international productions, despite some negative reactions from the critics.

Scott Zeiger, chief executive of Clear Channel Entertainment’s North American theater division, brought McAnuff and Wildhorn together. At the time--two years ago--McAnuff was editing his film “The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle” in New York. He and Wildhorn met, and the composer played the director some themes and motifs he’d composed.

“I really wrote a lot of this music before we started, and that’s how it always goes with me,” Wildhorn says. “I have got to see for myself if I can create a new musical vocabulary that will keep me inspired and passionate and having a lot of fun, because these journeys can take years of your life.”

Wildhorn and McAnuff discussed the direction the project should take. “We had a fairly long conversation about what it shouldn’t be, that it shouldn’t be a series of pop ballads or it shouldn’t be a parody,” McAnuff says. “It should be something with some kind of 19th century influence and a little bit more classical and sober.”

The next step was choosing collaborators. “We started coming up with people, and the two guys who were top of the list were Christopher Hampton and Don Black,” McAnuff says. “I really felt strongly that if we were going to do this, as Americans, that it would really behoove us to do a hands across the ocean thing.”

McAnuff and Wildhorn aimed high and got their men. Tony-and Oscar-winning lyricist-songwriter Black has worked extensively with Andrew Lloyd Webber and is perhaps best known for such songs as “Born Free” and “To Sir With Love.” Hampton, arguably one of the most distinguished playwrights of his generation, is the author of such works as “Tales From Hollywood” and “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” and has translated plays by Yasmina Reza, Chekhov, Ibsen and Moliere.

At the time, Wildhorn, who also runs a division of Atlantic Records, was working on a multi-album project called “The Romantics” with Black, among others. He approached Black, and Black approached Hampton.

“Christopher and I had been looking to find something after ‘Sunset,”’ Black recalls. “I called Christopher and said, ‘What do you think of ‘Dracula’? And he immediately came back and said, ‘I think the first 100 pages are terrific, but then it gets a bit woollier.’ His grasp of stories is just amazing.”

“It’s always been one of my favorite books actually,” Hampton says. “I read it when I was 17, and I remember vividly how un-put-downable it was. It becomes rather rambling. [But] obviously it’s full of intensely memorable scenes, or it wouldn’t have become the fixture in the popular imagination that it is.”

When McAnuff returned to the helm of the playhouse last fall--he had been gone since 1994 but returned after the sudden departure of then-artistic director Anne Hamburger--he and his “Dracula, The Musical” team had just started work. “I was looking for material for the season,” McAnuff says. “And because this is the one theater project I was working on, I thought, let’s try to see if we can’t get it ready.

First came an outline, which all the key creators agreed upon. Then Black and Hampton set to work.

One asset they sought to capitalize on was the work’s distinct vocabulary. “If you read Bram Stoker, with all this stuff about mortal sin and eternal love or whatever, there’s a language to it,” Black explains.

Initially, Black focused more on lyrics and Hampton more on the book, but in the end they became co-librettists, as they were on “Sunset Boulevard.” “Essentially we did the book and lyrics in a room together,” Hampton explains.

Writers more often work in solitude, so that kind of close collaboration requires an unusual level of trust. “You have to learn to think aloud when you work with somebody on book and lyrics,” Black says.

“Billy Wilder--how’s that for a bit of name-dropping--once said to me and Christopher when we did ‘Sunset,’ ‘You guys are very good together.’ He said, ‘Collaborators should be people who respect each other but who think entirely different.’ And I think that’s true.”

Dramatically, the challenge was “to collapse the novel in such a way that you’ve got everything essential in it,” Hampton says. “I wanted it to move very fast and be the theatrical equivalent of a page-turner.”

The central character also underwent a bit of Transylvanian transformation. “We actually did make his part quite a bit bigger, giving him more presence,” Hampton notes. And he’s become a kinder, gentler bloodsucker as well. “We’ve just exposed a part of his psyche so that you can say, ah, there is a man there,” adds Black. “I think we’ve given him a bit more humanity.”

Wildhorn began composing before the libretto was complete. He began by finding a musical idiom for the piece. “I’m writing for modern audiences and always trying to write in a modern musical vocabulary because that usually sits more comfortably on the ear,” he explains.

“With that said, I’m trying to write the gothic nature of the piece,” Wildhorn continues. “The last time I did a gothic piece was ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ and that was--with no apologies--very, very pop. I wrote that when I was in my 20s and that’s where my head was then.

“This piece was written at 42, so I’m a little different guy and I just did a more serious piece musically,” Wildhorn continues. “The musical vocabulary will always be contemporary and modern because that’s who I am, but where my fingers are going on the piano is much more classical.”

Whether or not this changes Wildhorn’s theatrical reputation, the creative team seems aware of the need to counter the bad rap.

“I know he’s taken his lumps, but he’s a remarkably talented guy,” McAnuff says. “I think this guy really rose to the occasion. I hope that people are open-minded because prejudice is a terrible thing.

“We have an orchestra of 11 here so we’ll go as far as we can, but it isn’t about electric guitars and drum kits and electric bass, and it doesn’t sound like Euro rock, the way some of his shows obviously have--and God knows some of them have been very successful.”

Indeed, Black seems to speak the team’s hopes when he says, “I think people will be surprised, because what may sound just like an out and out commercial idea--’Dracula, The Musical’--hopefully it’s got more depth than that.”

Two weeks before the Broadway Theatre booking became public in early October, McAnuff denied there was anything in the works for future productions of “Dracula, The Musical.”

“There’s no plan at this stage beyond La Jolla,” McAnuff says. “Obviously the authors have hopes for that, but it’s not one of those shows that’s being designed to move. We’ll see what happens.”

In fact, a deal was already in the works, and a potentially lucrative one at that. “You can get a large stream of revenue from premiering a musical, definitely,” McAnuff explains. “We’re hoping that ‘Millie’ goes to Broadway this spring because that’s a great income stream for this theater. Our debt was basically erased by revenue from ‘How to Succeed’ and from ‘Tommy.”’

Still, McAnuff cautions against casting too much of an eye down the road when developing new musicals. “I don’t measure the success of a show here by what happens to it in the future,” he says. “The second you start thinking, ‘Oh boy, we can create hit shows here,’ those are the shows that end up in the dumpsters. I think it’s really important to just focus on seeing whether it works or not.” *

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“Dracula, The Musical,” La Jolla Playhouse, La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, UC San Diego campus, La Jolla. Opens Oct. 28. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 25. $21-$55. (858) 550-1010.