Tanz Der Vampire

[James885]

Posted: 8/7/10 at 11:04pm

Recently I came across a subtitled professionally shot video of Tanz der Vampire. It was astonishing to see the differences between the original German production and Dance of The Vampires. Has anybody else ever seen the pro-shot video or seen the show live?

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 8/8/10 at 12:43am

No, nobody has.

[KChenowethfan]

Posted: 8/8/10 at 2:15pm

I just saw Tanz Der Vampire when I was in Stuttgart, Germany a few weeks ago for work. It was playing in my hotel/entertainment complex along with We Will Rock You (which I did not see).

I never saw the show on Broadway, but I can see why it did not go over very well. I enjoyed myself- if only for the camp/production value and my love of seeing shows in foreign languages- but I can say it appeared the German audience ate it up. As I understand it, this production came back by popular demand from a few years ago.

[gvendo2005]

Posted: 8/8/10 at 11:59pm

^ Part of the reason it didn't succeed on Broadway is that the book (and bits of the score) was vastly rewritten. Thanks in part to September 11, the show didn't open till the season immediately after one of the nation's biggest disasters, so a dark, brooding opera where the bad guys win at the end was decidedly not cool with a New York crowd, who wanted feelgood entertainment like The Producers.

As such, a rewrite with a more comic angle took place (comedic playwright David Ives took a whack at the book, among others, including star Michael Crawford, who revised and rearranged much of the material in previews), and it came out looking more like Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead and Loving It than the Polanski film on which it was based, with a lot of campy humor that differed considerably from the original show. At one point, tension backstage was so bad that the composer's long-time manager, who was also one of the producers, fired him from the show, which turned out well for Jim Steinman, but not so well for the show, which met with tons of harsh criticism.

Sadly, the American version became one of the biggest financial flops in Broadway history, losing roughly $12 million, easily eclipsing Carrie's loss margin. This is not to say the more serious version would have played any better than the campy romp at that time in those circumstances, but qualitatively what you saw in Germany is definitely better than what played here.