‘Twas a bleak Wednesday evening when I made my way to CSI’s auditorium, only to find that I was in store for something RAT’s production of Dracula- far bleaker. Nothing could have prepared me for such an event, no tale of horror even came close to the disaster I saw onstage; a myriad of mistakes and poor choices. One wonders why any man, or vampire, would want to inhabit a world longer than his natural time, in which failures- such as this production- are left to run. Dracula- directed by Shane Brown- is running from October 8th to the 18th, quite fitting for the Halloween season, but I am afraid the production almost put a damper on my holiday spirit. Although there were a few successful scenes throughout the play, I am sorry to say they were outweighed by the dreadfully boring rest that seemed to have …show more content…
The play begins with two best friends, Lucy (played by Emilee Gomske) and Mina (performed by Meghan Burnham), sitting on a bed gushing about their love interests. Lucy reveals that she has not one, not two, but three marriage proposals. Mina then reads aloud some of her fiancé’s- Jonathan Harker, played by Tim Hafer- letters that he wrote on his travels to Transylvania to provide assistance to a rather creepy client who is looking to by an estate in England.
Lucy dumps a suitor, Dr. Seward (played by Mathew Durand), with one of the old “let’s be friends” lines. To cheer himself up, the doctor starts to really focus on his job in a mental asylum where he studies corrupt minds. Seward’s current project is a madman named Renfield (Drake Arial) who nonstop coos about the coming of his “master.” Meanwhile, “Miss Lucy’s” evenings are filled with nightmares mingled with dangerous acts of sleep walking often to the edge of a cliff. During these bouts, one can only guess that she will run into a well-known, bloodsucking, immortal creature- AKA