The Menier Chocolate Factory today announces initial casting for the UK premiere of Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen.
Greenberg directs James Daly (reprising the role of Dracula), Safeena Ladha (Lucy Westfeldt), Diane Pilkington (Dr. Westfeldt), and Charlie Stemp (Jonathan Harker).
The production opens at Menier Chocolate Factory on 17 March, with previews from 8 March, and runs until 3 May. Priority booking opens today, with public booking opening on 14 January.
Full casting will be announced shortly.
Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors gives Bram Stoker’s horror classic a comic makeover in this lightning-fast gender-bending reimagining that features a Gen Z pansexual Count Dracula in the midst of an existential crisis. With a cast of five switching costumes and roles at the drop of a hat, this 90-minute freewheeling send-up plays with sexuality and gender norms in the spirit of comedy legends Charles Ludlam, Monty Python and Mel Brooks – and celebrates goth, camp, and the magic of live theatre itself.
In the treacherous mountains of Transylvania, Jonathan Harker, a meek English estate agent, takes a harrowing journey to meet a new and mysterious client, who happens to be the most terrifying(ly narcissistic) monster the world has ever known: Count Dracula! When the Count sets his sights on Harker’s fiancé, the brilliant young earth scientist Lucy Westfeldt, he meets his match for the first time – as well as a slew of other colorful characters including vampire hunter Jean Van Helsing, insect connoisseur Renfield and behavioral psychiatrist Wallace Westfeldt, whose British country estate doubles as a free-range mental asylum.
