At NMSU, ‘Dracula’ delivers batty camp

From the moment four actors take their positions by the four wooden crates serving as versatile set pieces throughout the performance, American Southwest Theatre Company’s production of “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” is an eruption of high-camp, cross-dressing, clownish satire with an ensemble of inspired comic performers juggling multiple roles.

This spoof of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel belongs to a popular genre of anarchic ensemble comedies based on familiar works: Think of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged),” the “Greater Tuna” plays, Patrick Barlow’s parody of “The 39 Steps,” and similar plays featuring small ensembles taking on an array of characters with lightning-quick costume changes, cross-dressing, simple props and scenic elements and a few puppets to fill out a party scene.

Coincidentally, we recently passed the 40th anniversary of “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” the show epitomizing the work of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, drawing from Gothic horror, the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Victorian pulp fiction for inspiration as it explored themes of gender identity, queerness and critique of social hierarchy. These later plays, while mostly in good fun and “safe” to the dominant culture, owe much to Ludlam, too.

At New Mexico State University’s resident theatre company, student performers Eliza Phillips, Okalani Ventura, Vance Cook and Carlos Huereca populate the comic antics of “Dracula” writers Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen, who first presented this sendup as a radio play in 2020. For all of the slapstick and theatrical jokes (such as actors providing their own ominous mist with spray bottles) the script retains a great deal of satirical dialogue and wry word play at a pace similar to that of the old Goon Show from BBC radio. The play premiered off-Broadway a year ago and is quickly becoming a favorite of regional and amateur theaters nationwide, lending itself to simple production elements and a small cast.

The demands on the performers are not to be underestimated and generally these students keep up with the breakneck pace and impeccable timing required. Mario Montiel completes the cast as the self-obsessed and insatiable Transylvanian Count Dracula, writhing with unquenchable pan-sexuality that lands like a hurricane on the stuffy, late-Victorian London household of Dr. Westfeldt, his daughters and the nebbishy puddle of traumatized English masculinity that is Lucy’s fiancé, Jonathan Harker.

Under the direction of professor Nichole Hamilton, the clowning is deft enough to allow some sympathy for the characters. Cook wins hearts as the younger sister, Mina, desperate for a suitor until she falls, all too enthusiastically, into a vampire’s arms. (Grrrl, here we go again.) Cook emerges from that character into the person of Dr. Jean van Helsing, portraying the iconic vampire hunter as a tough, Teutonic woman riding horseback and hunting the undead in a frock dress, to the consternation and growing curiosity of Phillips’ blustering, sexist Dr. Westfeldt.

With no intermission, the hilarity rolls along at breakneck pace to the finish, winking at obvious parallels to xenophobia and gender norms of our own era. Early in the play, Dracula announces, “I’m a unicorn,” and by the end the play we get the message that the boundaries of seriousness and normality keep our authentic passions in a cage, where the soul cries out, like Freddie Mercury, “I want to break free.”

“Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” runs through Oct. 6 at the Mark and Stephanie Medoff Theatre at the ASNMSU Center for the Arts, 1000 E. University Avenue. Ticketing and additional information are available via the box office at 575-646-4515 or online at theatre.nmsu.edu under the “performances and events” tab.