Dracula Month Day 3: Dracula (the play)

Perhaps one of the most influential adaptations of Dracula is barely viewed by today's audiences. Dracula was a 1924 play by Hamilton Deane which was revised by John L. Balderston in 1927; Balderston's play starred Bela Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan in its original cast and those men would feature in the 1931 motion picture adaptation, which was itself drawn from the play.

Similar to how William Gillette's play of Sherlock Holmes has had an overwhelming effect on how Sherlock Holmes is perceived in popular culture (deerstalker cap, 'elementary, my dear Watson'), so Deane's Dracula is where the count became known for wrapping himself up in a dark cape and many of the scenes which the motion picture version would immortalize.

I haven't read the original version of the play, just the Balderston revision and it's fairly off-model from the novel. The characters of Mina Murray & Lucy Westenra are reversed and Mina's entire story happens off-stage, referenced only in dialogue. There's no Arthur Holmwood or Quincey Morris (indeed, subsequent adaptations would seldom ever employ those two) and Dr. Seward is Lucy's father instead of her suitor. However, moreso than any of that, the play is very small, as you would expect from a 1920s stage play. It's a drawing room story where folks sit around and talk about the strange happenings in Purley (not Whitby) ever since Dracula moved next door to the sanatorium. The events in the story occur over about two days.

It's not a terribly good play. The limitations of what could be done on stage restrict Dracula's abilities; even his one supposed on stage transformation into a bat relies heavily on the actors to carry it ("Up the chimney as a bat!" one exclaims). It's also very light on menace - since in this version Mina has already died at Dracula's hand and her return as a vampire and death at Van Helsing's hands all happen off-stage that threat is somewhat existential. In fact, it's such a tame tale that Renfield survives! The only character dead by the end is Dracula himself.

Tomorrow I'll talk about the film version of this play.