Theater Review—

Town Players Is Offering A Howlingly Good ‘Dracula’

By Julie Stern

Newtown Town Players are having fun this Halloween season with a no holds barred production of Dracula, using the 1927 script that first introduced Bela Lugosi to the Broadway stage. The packed house at the Little Theater last weekend enjoyed it so vigorously that the audience members were soon enthusiastically echoing the taped howling of dogs, every time the Count, or one of his avatars, was about to come on the scene.

For anyone who doesn’t know the story, Dr Seward’s Sanitorium in Purley, England — some twenty miles from London — is being besieged by strange and horrific night visitors. A young friend of Seward’s daughter Lucy has died a mysterious death from loss of blood, the only sign of a cause being two tiny marks on her neck.

Now Lucy herself has been attacked by something that seems to enter her bedroom in the form of a red-eyed nightmare, leaving her weak, pale and terrified.

Her father sends for his friend, the noted Dutch scientific researcher Abraham Van Helsing, who, upon hearing the details of the case, warns that it sounds like the work of a vampire. Although Seward, and Lucy’s fiancé, Jonathan Harker, scoff at the idea of the actual existence of “the undead” Van Helsing wins them over to his side, and the rest of the play revolves around uncovering the identity of the vampire and figuring out how to outwit him before he destroys Lucy.

Who is responsible for the girl’s condition?

Is it the robotic, red-lipped Transylvanian Count who has recently moved into the adjoining castle? Is it Seward’s patient Renfield, who snatches flies out of the air and eats them, and who demonstrates an uncanny ability to escape from his room, despite the locked doors and barred windows and the 30-foot drop from the walls of the sanitarium?

And what about the maid, Miss Wells, who is supposed to be Lucy’s protector, but who spends her time trying on Lucy’s perfume and lounging on Lucy’s couch, or flirting with Renfield’s hapless keeper, Butterworth?

All of this is performed with gusto by the company that includes the real father and daughter team of Matt McQuail as Seward and Kelly McQuail as Lucy.

Steve Affinito is marvelous as the tic contorted Renfield, and Doug Miller gives a most convincing performance as the scientist from Amsterdam.

Alexis M. Vournazos is sweepingly dramatic as the black caped Count from next door,  Timothy Huebenthal and Jenny Schuck are amusingly lower class as the two servants, and Richard Tovish is both anxious and adamant as Lucy’s stalwartly devoted lover.

The whole thing is pure, campy entertainment and as I said before, the audience had a howling good time.

(Performances continue weekends at The Little Theater, on Orchard Hill Road in Newtown, through November 19. Curtain is Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, with a Sunday, November 13 matinee planned for 2 pm.

Tickets are $15 for the evening shows, $12 for the matinee. Call 270-9144 for reservations or other information.)