One of my favorite every-few-year traditions that has grown over our years living in Kansas City is partaking of seasonally appropriate live theater in October. And my absolute favorite place for this to happen is at The Coterie. The intimate setting of this family theatre makes their shows and experience and this one was no exception. When I saw that this month’s offering was Dracula: The Journal of Jonathan Harker there was no chance I was missing it. Especially when it advertises that it adheres closely to the original novel by Bram Stoker.
I’ve often complained of adaptations of this, my favorite novel, though I should expect such. When does any novel adapted to other media satisfy the passionate fan? When the lights went down on today’s performance and the audience expressed its pleasure, my enthusiastic applause was for the performance and the faithfulness of this play to Bram Stoker’s most famous work.
Dracula: The Journal of Jonathan Harker is a one-man show in which actor Zachary Andrews voices ten characters, captivates the audience with the physicality of his performance, and brings Bram Stoker’s novel to life in sixty-five non-stop minutes. In a review on the Kansas City Star website it is revealed that Andrews burns 908 calories at each performance, and when you’ve seen it for yourself it is not hard to see why. On a sparse but effective set Andrews climbs and swings and hangs and crawls, striding into the audience on occasion, and all the while he reveals the story as Stoker revealed it, through the journal entries of his characters, primarily Jonathan Harker.
Stoker’s language is ever present, with Andrews appropriating a number of distinct accents and voice inflections to bring the various players to life. His vocal and athletic prowess captivates the audience. It was a special performance and I am happy that I got to share it with family and friends on Saturday afternoon. If you are anywhere near the Kansas City area over the next week, this is well worth checking out. For those who won’t have the opportunity, here is an audio sample of Zachary Andrews’ performance with some images from the show. It was such a pleasure to experience Dracula in this manner.
Andrews
The script,staging, and performance were
fantastic. I highly recommend you see it!
So glad it worked out for us to go, it was fun.
Looks great and if you enjoyed it then it must be because you really do love that novel!
I absolutely love the poster – I want!
Lynn 😀
Yes, I was prepared to be hyper-critical if it had been advertised as being faithful to the book and was not, but thankfully it was exactly as advertised. I was thrilled.
Sounds wonderful!
It was great, seasonal fun, Andrea.
I’m usually disappointed by film/theatre adaptations of beloved books too. Good to hear you found one you liked of your favorite! And this sounds fascinating… Even before you mentioned the calories burned, I was thinking that this must be an exhausting production! Must be amazing to see.
The video is wonderfully creepy! Very atmospheric and evidently Andrews does an excellent Bela Lugosi–I mean, *Dracula* 😉 voice.
I’m nowhere near Kansas City, but if this ever comes near me, I’ll have to look for a chance to go!
Its just so hard to do good adaptations, but Dracula has always baffled me because there is so much good material there and the adapters usually go so far afield of it.
Hope you’ll get a chance to see it some time. I’m looking forward to going to more of the area plays now that we have more time and income to do so.
That sounds good! And impressive for a one-man show. I’ve also been often disappointed by Dracula adaptations–I’ve never really understood why they seem to always stray so far (at least the ones I’ve seen). At least we always have the book to return to! Glad you found an adaptation you enjoyed.
Ha, that is just what I said in my response above Amanda. You nailed it. Why can’t they use more of the source material? Very weird.
But yes, the book is here and that is really all that matters as it is far more creepy than any film could be.