People's Light presents 'Such Things as Vampires'

The result is too tame for the form yet still too loud and dangerous for People's Light’s subscription audience.

Set designer Arnel Sancianco provides familiar end-of-the-world trappings: a warehouselike space with scaffolding, tall sliding doors, and rusty beams stretching above the audience. The dingy look is accentuated by lighting designer Isabella Byrd’s glowing science-y beakers and bottles, practical lighting from shop lights and flashlights, and bold colors filtered through haze and murk.

Upstage, a drum kit anchors the band area, where all six actors, each playing several instruments, rock out for 10 catchy songs (music supervised, orchestrated, and arranged by Jamie Mohamdein), plus innovative scene underscoring through the 90-minute show. One can't help but marvel at the similarity between post-apocalyptic aesthetic and rock-concert clichés.

No fangs

An usher offers to stamp our hands when we enter. Another provides a stone. A few people receive pouches of salt. "We are here to save you," we're told by the Preventers (in fabulous costumes by Melissa Ng), fashionably shabby as fits the genre. Inexplicably, post-apocalyptic characters always dress well.

"Conditions are ripe for something very bad to happen," we're told. "We'll get you through this." They need our help, which, along with some tidy exposition and the multicultural cast's youthful enthusiasm, makes Such Things as Vampires feel like a children's show.

The stones conjure anti-vamp mumbo-jumbo, and the salt wards off neck-biters (no garlic needed) so we're urged to sprinkle a preventative pinch over our left shoulder. The bat hand stamp is never referenced but washes off easier than typical club stamps.

The ensemble enacts the story of "Mina the Transmogrified," also known as "the Prophet Mina," and we're in Dracula-- sort of. Crystal Lucas-Perry plays Mina, whose BFF Lucy (Isa Arciniegas) holds three suitors at bay while the women explore their forbidden attraction.

Stoker spins in his coffin

This version of Stoker's familiar tale is reminiscent of Anne Washburn's post-apocalyptic Mr. Burns (at the Wilma Theater October 23 - November 11, 2018). In that play, a Simpsons episode gets twisted by time and memory after civilization's fall into a ritualistic tale.

"Dracula" is never uttered, glimpsed only in shadows. Mina's fiancé Harker (Alex Lydon) can't compete with Lucy, even as she transforms into a hungry animal, instead of the typical suave sexy immortal. Director Carden stages their intimate scenes downstage on the floor, so we strain to see them. Daniel Croix Henderson plays bug-eating asylum inmate Renfield, and Pearl Rhein plays several roles and contributes haunting violin effects.

The script raises modern issues sucked from today's headlines. Could vampirism be a male invention for the subjugation of rebellious women, as witchcraft was used throughout history? Van Helsing (Sam Henderson), Stoker's vampire-hunting hero, becomes the patriarchy’s bad guy, blocking Mina and Lucy from love and evolutionary advancement.

These interpretations are timely and fascinating but feel forced. Mina asks, in children's-theater style, "Who has the right to touch whom, and why?" Perhaps overstating the story's morals reveals the influence of the show’s “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Advocates” Terrell Green and Amelia Parenteau.

The rock concert finale -- plus a nifty surprise twist -- ends Such Things as Vampires on a strong note. However, it's like Hedwig and the Angry Inch diluted for family audiences.

Opening night's real thunder and torrential rain outplayed the show's restraint and preachiness.