Put a stake in it

This Dracula never should have seen the light of day

by Jeffrey Gantz

DRACULA, Choreographed by Ben Stevenson. Scenic design by Thomas Boyd. Costume design by Judanna Lynn. Lighting design by Timothy Hunter. Flying by Foy. Music by Franz Liszt, arranged by John Lanchbery. Presented by Boston Ballet at the Wang Center through May 23.

I was genuinely looking forward to Boston Ballet's season finale. No, Ben Stevenson's Dracula was never going to be Swan Lake, but if the company wanted to take a bite out of a bigger audience, to bring in some fresh blood, who was I to complain? And Franz Liszt seemed like the right composer for Stevenson's new (it premiered in Houston in 1997) million-dollar ballet. I had visions of Dracula rising from his coffin to the uplifting strains of the B-minor piano sonata. Lucy Westenra's cemetery seduction of Arthur Holmwood abetted by the infernal Totentanz. Mina Harker yielding to Dracula in her marriage bed (with husband Jonathan sleeping alongside) as Les préludes reaches its orgasmic climax. The Missa choralis pronouncing a benediction over the dying Quincey Morris. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel is, underneath the Christian allegory, an exposé of Victorian sexual repression: Dracula "knows" Lucy and Mina more intimately than Arthur or Jonathan ever could. Stoker's work invites ballet to pump new life into tired conventions, to spill some blood, to put, yes, sex on stage.

Alas, Ben Stevenson is on the side of Arthur and Jonathan. He ditches Stoker's novel, giving us instead a generic ballet plot with the usual generic-ballet-plot holes. His Disney-safe choreography sleepwalks. And John Lanchbery's pastiche score, in eschewing the obvious selections, proves only that unfamiliar Liszt is mostly second-rate Liszt. The result is UDOA: un-dead on arrival. Don't bother with plasma -- it'll take an infusion of real blood to save this one.

Thomas Boyd's set does look like a million bucks. The scrim features a pair of twisted oaks enveloped by huge bat wings, and as it rises, tuba and bass drum ominously intone the plainsong Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath") from the Totentanz (at least Lanchbery got this right). Through the smoky red lighting you can make out, in the distance, the figure of a woman resting on a bier. We're in Dracula's castle, what looks like a stone crypt, with standing candelabras everywhere. Brides sporting identical teased blond tresses and identical white negligees flit about like the Stepford Wives of Transylvania while Dracula, in the well-publicized 20-pound cape, staggers about clutching his throat in paroxysms of bloodlust and Renfield (the one other character taken from Stoker's novel) runs crazily here and there. Some brides fly, for no apparent reason. (All the flying is, however, superbly done.) There's a pallid pas de trois for Dracula and two identical brides. Dracula descends from the ceiling. He gestures right. He gestures left. He ascends. It all suggests a bad '20s horror silent (I kept expecting intertitles). After about a half-hour of this night of the living dead, relief arrives from the nearby village in the form of a coach (looks like Carabosse's from Sleeping Beauty) that brings Dracula's new bride, Flora. A quick bête-à-tête and she departs the land of the living.

Act two serves up another scrumptious set, with sea-green sfumato mountains recalling Albrecht Altdorfer and spiky, clutching, Sleeping Beauty oaks framing a succession of thatched houses, the most impressive having a balustraded second-floor balcony. The ladies' costumes, too, are fetching, elaborately decorated Gypsy skirts with red underskirts and short boots. But the story and the choreography are strictly by-the-numbers. It's the 18th birthday of innkeeper's daughter Svetlana (as explained by the brief program synopsis rather than by anything that happens on stage). There are mugs everywhere (beer? wine? cider?), but only the Old Man seems to be imbibing.

And no one seems concerned by Flora's disappearance. The innkeeper does a comic dance with his wife. The couples strut their stuff. There's a ribbon dance for the ladies, a quarterstaff dance (with morris influences) for the men. The Old Woman (presumably the wife of the Old Man) recalls the glory days of her youth in a bit of mime whose details left me clueless. Svetlana is given a necklace by her mother -- garlic rather than flowers, but you'd have to be sitting pretty close to tell. Svetlana's bashful young man, Frederic or Fredrick (take your choice from the program), is prompted to ask her father for her hand, but he proposes with all the conviction of Danny Kaye courting Vera-Ellen in White Christmas, and dad holds out till daughter does her "O mio babbino caro" mime. The traditional pas de deux follows; our hero is treated to an on-the-spot bachelor party (drinks, no dames), after which he cuts loose with some snappy tours à la seconde.

Yet another 30 minutes with virtually no action -- but then Flora turns up. She doesn't like Svetlana's garlic garland; she doesn't like the priest's cross; she runs about like the crazed Giselle. Dracula materializes and grabs Svetlana, Renfield shoves her into the carriage, and they race away, with Flora as a vampy postillon, leaving the desolated village looking like Giselle at the end of act one, or Sleeping Beauty at the end of act one, or Swan Lake at the end of act three, or -- well, you get the idea.

Back at the castle, Flora appears to have mixed feelings about the new arrival, especially since she got only a quickie bite on the floor whereas Svetlana is being trousseau'd for the nuptial bed. Flora dances out her frustration; Dracula seems not to notice. The hapless Svetlana is brought in -- but now it's time for the cavalry to arrive, Frederic/Fredrick and the priest and the innkeeper and some stout lads (these last fall to the first charge of Dracula's brides). The resultant confrontation seems to last a vampire lifetime, with the rescuers' only cross being passed from the priest to the innkeeper, then back to the priest, then over to Frederic/Fredrick, who finally draws the curtains to reveal the light of day and set off the all-important exploding chandelier.

Where's the sex? Where's the blood? Where's the story? Word on the Dracula "street" is that the woman on the bier is supposed to be Dracula's favorite bride (from when he was human?) and that he's attracted to Svetlana because she resembles his lost love. Intriguing ideas, but how would anyone know? In a preview article for this production, Boston Ballet artistic director Anna-Marie Holmes told the Boston Globe, "As long as it keeps an artistic context -- the music is good, the choreography is good -- why not bring some new things to bring people in?" Fair enough. People want a swiveling set? Bring it on. A careening chandelier? Let 'er rip. But only if the basics are in place. And if the basics -- the music and the choreography, and the plot, and the characterization -- of this Dracula are "good," I'm Arlene Croce.

The dancers do their best to breathe life into Stevenson's corpse; during the opening weekend many were still in the process of developing their underwritten roles. Laszlo Berdo is the most dramatic Dracula; he plays the count's anguish to the hilt but in the process underlines the role's one-dimensionality. On Friday Yuri Yanofsky laid the foundation for a more ambivalent Dracula, one who might be interested in sex as well as blood; this could bear fruit by the end of the run. At Saturday's matinee, Viktor Plotnikov seemed to be keeping his options open, and who could blame him?

Kyra Strasberg is too sexy and sophisticated for the ingenue Flora of the first act, but she brings a healthy yearning and sensuality to her third-act solo; all she needs is a character to play and the attentive Dracula that Stevenson didn't provide (but Yanofsky may yet). Jennifer Gelfand's Flora hyperventilates gloriously, as if she were still hoping for a shot on Melrose Place; it's a comic-book interpretation that's just right. Gelfand's snaky hands, suggestive shoulders, and bedroom eyes give act three an electrifying erotic charge, and the basilisk look her Flora shoots new-bride Svetlana could short-circuit any mortal.

Of the three fine sets of village lovers, Pollyana Ribeiro and Zachary Hench are almost too ingenuous; Larissa Ponomarenko (immaculate as ever and, like Strasberg, too deep for this ballet) and Simon Ball have a big potential that's still maturing. Adriana Suárez and Christopher Budzynski, cute but committed, are ready to drink now; in his first major role, Budzynski does himself proud. Both characters are wasted in act three: Svetlana offers all the resistance of a fly in Dracula's web (think instead of Isabelle Adjani's Lucy and Klaus Kinski's Dracula in Werner Herzog's 1979 Nosferatu), and Frederic/Fredrick is reduced to running around waving a cross (he's lucky he doesn't meet the bloodsucker from Roman Polanski's 1966 spoof The Fearless Vampire Killers who rolls his eyes and says, "Oy, have you got the wrong vampire!"). Talk about waste: Renfield (Paul Thrussell or Reagan Messer) gesticulates wildly, does a few nice turns, and eats a couple bugs. And the sexual potential of the corps brides is shrouded in shadowy lighting and zombie-like choreography; these ladies don't get to look their most captivating till the lights come up for the curtain call. Jonathan McPhee's orchestra gives its best performance of the year in a losing cause; the score has no shape, no progression, and Liszt's best tunes sleep undisturbed.

Can anything resuscitate this Dracula? At first I thought they'd have to woo Julie Harris and Charles Durning away from The Gin Game next door at the Wilbur -- that's the level of acting you'd need. Or maybe they could turn Dracula into the skin-scratching, blood-sampling "DJ Count D." But in fact a few dramaturgical improvements would take this production a long way, even without Bram Stoker. Bring Dracula's favorite bride stage front at the outset and show us how much he loved her. Bring the lights up on his other brides so they can reveal their personality and passion. Bring the favorite bride -- let's call her Flora -- to life and have her reproach her husband whenever he lusts after a new love. For act two, put garlic bulbs and crosses everywhere to convey the villagers' fear and create suspense as to whether Dracula mightn't show up at any moment. Turn act three into a duel between the jealous Flora and the suddenly aroused Svetlana. And dispense with the usual curtain-call flowers -- let's have a village girl (or at least a bouquet of blood-red roses) for Dracula, a spider or two for Renfield, and garlic necklaces for everyone else.

I really wanted to like this production, and I gave it every chance (one dress rehearsal, three performances). There's nothing wrong with Boston Ballet's trying to put some money in its coffers, but this vampire of a production is sucking dollars out of the community without leaving any art behind. John Cranko's superb Onegin (which the company last did in 1997) is the real thing, flesh-and-blood contemporary ballet. It'll be alive and well long after this Dracula has crumbled into dust.