Vampire Musical Memories - Anyone Else See Dracula, Lestat & Dance Of the Vampires?

Blessed to have seen DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES at the Minskoff and loved it. Max Von Essen and Mandy Gonzalez were pretty epic and though I solely went because the buzz was that it would be closing soon, I wanted to add it to my list of flop shows I’ve seen. Did not expect to LOVE it so much and the audience was there with me and “got” it and had a glorious time. I still remember every time the lyrics of “turn around” from “Total Eclipse of the Heart” were sung, the theatre roared. It was so bad it was delicious. One exquisite sloppy and fabulous 8 course meal.  

You should add Blood/Love to your show list if you want to hit all the vampires!

I saw all three -  and saw DOTV in particular multiple times. 

 

I thought DOTV was an insane and wild romp. I understand why European fans get defensive about how Broadway 'ruined' the piece, but to be honest - I had a blast, the show was NEVER boring, and the design was astonishing. I would love to see it live in its original incarnation, however, as I love a lot of the score. It definitely had problems though, and the book couldn't seem to decide what kind of show it wanted to be. Still, like I said, NEVER boring and every time I went the audience went from "wtf" to "LOL" by the end of the first act. The piece deserves a second chance.

LESTAT needed a trim and to be focused a bit, for sure. I liked the score and wish Elton would release the album and the rights to maybe let a fresh director take a shot. 

DRACULA was boring. I love me some Dracula but the musical just kind of sat there. The plot dragged along. Some of the songs were wonderful and typical Wildhorn, and others merely serviced their scenes. The flying was super impressive as has been mentioned. My friend commented that he hoped Tom Hewitt was receiving frequent flyer miles because it felt like when they couldn't decide how to stage a scene change they'd simply fly him across at random as a distraction. 

I do think a vampire musical can work - we just haven't had a great one yet. Jury is still out on Lost Boys. Apparently Rainbow Stage in Winnipeg premiered a new vampire musical last year, the title escapes me now, but it was very well received. 

 

Having also seen all three, I echo lots of the thoughts on this thread. Mine $0.02 ---

Dance of the Vampires --- it's as wild as anything you'd read. The physical production alone was incredible. It was the tone that couldn't figure itself out, and Crawford trying his best to not-be-the-Phantom was valiant in a way, though he looked like Vegas Wayne Newton giving Vampire in that costume. Supporting cast was a luxury of riches, though - Mandy Gonzalez, Max von Essen, Leah Hocking - all giving it 110%. I hope to someday see the darker version of it that's apparently quite popular across Europe, particularly in Germany. But unlike the other two, was certainly never boring and a big swing in a lot of ways.

Lestat - boy howdy, this one. On paper, sounds brilliant - globally known and popular IP with the Rice books - Elton John behind the keys - and Warner Brothers lead producing = plenty of budget. What shambled before sunrise on to the Palace stage was mostly baffling and dull, though a though-line here is that all of these shows have A+ casts - Hugh Panaro,, Carolee Carmello (who can do no wrong IMO), Drew Sarich - giving it their all. Carmello had one bonkers song "The Crimson Kiss" that she customarily threw herself into (again, can do no wrong IMO) - and a *marvelously* campy Act 2 number, "I Want More" delivered at 100 miles per hour by Allison Fischer as the young daughter vampire, forever cursed with being a child. And total vocal highlight was Sarich and Panaro's late Act 2 number "After All this Time" which was the closest the show got to the homoerotic elements of the story. But the title character just seemed like someone who things hapened to to as opposed to having any agency, if that makes any sense.

Dracula: The Musical - The reason Wildhorn has such a spotty reputation as a composer. Not a song or a moment I can remember. I believe this one moved its opening date repeatedly to try and fix / they had some "nudity-free" matinees where Kelli O'Hara's clothes weren't blown off. But just a plodding, doddering mess.

As an aside: My Mom and Dad (sadly no longer with us) loved going to shows, and when I worked behind the scenes at the time of these, would get them tickets as often as I could. Their gold-standard was the Frank Langella play adaptation (which from every review and photo I can find was indeed as iconic as its reputation claims.) Meeting up with them after: they smiled and had a variation on "The cast looked great and was having fun!" at the Wildhorn Dracula - but had a blast at Lestat, which unexpectedly ended up being the final performance which I'm sure was electric. 

I do hope Lost Boys can break the curse of "looks gorgeous / unmemorable score / book = mess", said honestly not shadily; am aiming to catch it the 2nd week of April.

Updated On: 3/30/26 at 05:34 PM

I saw Dance of the Vampires in revival in Austria so can't speak for the Broadway version, but the stagecraft/production values of those VBW produced Vienna musicals is simply outstanding (I also saw Elisabeth and the Stephen Schwartz musical Schikanader and really liked all of them.)

Saw the Lestat previews in San Francisco.  I went with a friend who had never seen the Interview movie or read the books and he was *utterly* lost the entire time.  I... kinda liked it?  Great cast, it looked great, and I wish we'd get that cast album.  It really did try to tackle too much material though--however it sounds like a lot of the changes made for Broadway removed the more memorable (albeit it kinda WTF) stuff from San Francisco like how the Theatre des Vampires do their performance.

Dracula I know nothing about really, but when I was interviewing Melissa Errico for a Zoom meet a bit over a year ago, nudity on stage came up including Dracula--and it wasn't too clear but I think she said at least some of the nudity (Kelli?) was actually mostly faked with prosthetics?  Could that be possible (she also implied there was some arguing that if one performer didn't have to do "real" nudity it was unfair to anyone else having to do it...)

uncageg said: "I saw "Dracula" with Frank Langella twice on Broadway. I took two trains up from Philly to see it. If I had lived in NYC I probably would have seen it several times. It was an excellent production. The eye condition he has, that I read he uses to his advantage, gave the character a whole new feel. I wanted to see it again with Raul Julia but was unable to."

I saw both in the production and honestly, I can’t say who I like better.  The show was stunning and so fun.  After I saw Langella on my 22nd birthday, he came in with a friend of mine to Ted Hook’s Backstage Bar to say “happy birthday” and he gave me an medalion which was a Gorey bat with the logo on it.  Sadly I lost it years ago.

As the resident "undead musical" historian around these parts (by which I mean the two major Jesus ones, plus the Jim Steinman brand of fanged fun-seekers), let me do my part to acquaint some of you with the European version of Dance of the Vampires. Poor substitute for the live experience, but hopefully close enough!

This playlist will take you to a collection of pro-shots (okay, and upscaled "slime tutorials," as the kids say) of the original Polanski production. (The first three will give you some hint of its original Vienna vibe, but anything after that is closer to what you would have seen on tour in Germany in recent years, including the extended "Red Boots Ballet"/"Say a Prayer" sequence, to give them their American titles, which replaced what used to be there and is, IMO, a massive improvement. The show itself, besides that major replacement, has been significantly trimmed down over the years, mostly for the better, so I'll forgive you if you restrict yourself to newer videos. And before you start your "BUT IT'S IN GERMAN!" number, the majority of them have English subtitles.)

This one will show you the slightly newer revival version (as seen in Budapest, Russia, and Vienna) that my pal Eric saw, which boasted some new designs by that European wunderkind Kentaur.

(I have another one with non-replica productions from Poland to Slovakia, Japan to Switzerland, even a bootleg Spanish translation in Mexicali, but let's leave it at two for now.)

You'll rapidly discover that it's not necessarily darker than its American counterpart, just better at balancing tone; scary at some points, hilarious at others. If anything, it calls to mind George Abbott's aphorism about how it won't work if you play it for comedy, but it will if you play it for real.

Does it work better? Well, almost 11,000 performances in 13 languages in 15 countries, selling nearly 11 million tickets, over close to 30 years... You do the math!

Updated On: 3/31/26 at 05:47 PM