Saturday night’s staging of “Dracula” by the Perry High School Drama Department showed promise in the young acting cast, about half of whom were underclassmen, and solid skills in the upperclassmen, who were all juniors.
Like last spring’s “Peter Pan,” Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” (1897) was produced by the rather decadent late-Victorian imagination, and both works have managed to stick in the popular memory until today but maybe for different reasons.
Modern psychology was emerging at the turn of the twentieth century — Sigmund Freud’s pioneering work, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” was published in German in 1900 — and the air of “Dracula” is filled with psychological odors, most plainly in the place of hypnosis, then called Mesmerism, but also in the importance of dreams and superstitions.
Count Dracula, played by junior Camden Studer, masters the people around him through mind control, mind reading and similar mental effects — although his cape also seems to do a lot of heavy lifting. The blood-drinking nobleman has relatively few lines in the play, but his malevolent presence is felt throughout.
Dracula’s opposite is Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, deftly played by junior Madison Mason. Van Helsing is a woman of science but not only of science, as is Jonathan Harker, for instance, played by junior Eoin Davis. Van Helsing uses science informed by superstition, which gives her the edge at last over the count, who seems to collect female victims rather in the creepy manner of Harvey Weinstein.
The final scene, with the stage littered with the corpses of the formerly undead but now fully dead, gives Van Helsing the triumphant line, “Free at last.” The freedom implied is that of a particular curse lifted but not necessarily freedom from superstition itself.
All the players had their charms, but sophomore Adrianna Escalante was notable for the character of Mrs. Wenstrom, who badgered her longsuffering servant girl Helga, played by junior Kayla McFarland, to comic effect. Ainsley Marburger also made a strong showing in the part of the servant Gretchen, dominating the first act but disappearing in the second and third acts.
Other actors included Kaylynn Bousman, Jayden Whitney, Zoe Meyer, Maura Richardson, Bella Nath, Alex Tasler, Trinity Summerson, Claudia Vargas and Chance Hoisington.
The crew included Brianna Fields, Jocelyn Hopkins, Bailey Piper, Emma McFarland, Alexa Zarate, Elyssa McFarland, Chase Archer, Halmar Arteaga, Karen Amaya, Justice Moreland, Dakota Strough, Delaney Eiteman and Julia Stetzel.
Randy Peterson directed the production, with set construction led by Chris Barck, auditorium management by Steve Cook and photographs by Elizabeth Marburger.
