Improv Playhouse presents Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ as a staged radio drama
Improv Playhouse invites audiences to step into the shadows as Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” returns to the stage in a chilling staged radio drama inspired by the legendary 1938 Orson Welles broadcast. Opening Friday, Oct. 16, “Dracula” will play just five performances through Oct. 30.
Directed by Improv Playhouse Founder and Executive Producer David Brian Stuart, the production recreates the atmosphere of radio’s golden age, when actors, microphones, carefully timed sound effects, and the imagination of the listener could conjure an entire world.
Welles first broadcast his adaptation of “Dracula” on July 11, 1938, as the inaugural episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, just months before his company’s famous broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.”
“’Dracula’ is almost ideally suited to radio theater because Stoker’s story already lives through voices; journals, letters, eyewitness accounts and fragments of information that slowly reveal what is happening,” Stuart said. “Rather than showing an audience everything, we give them the sounds, the voices and the atmosphere and allow their imaginations to complete the picture. Sometimes what you don’t see is considerably more frightening than what you do.”
Theater of the Mind
Improv Playhouse’s Radio Players bring the story to life through character performance, atmospheric sound and the conventions of classic live radio drama. For Stuart, that simplicity is precisely the attraction.
“We live in an entertainment world where virtually anything can be created digitally and put on a screen,” Stuart said. “Radio drama goes wonderfully in the opposite direction. Give an audience a voice in the darkness, a door opening somewhere it shouldn’t, footsteps approaching, and suddenly every person in the theater has created his or her own Dracula.”
The approximately hourlong adaptation remains remarkably faithful to the spirit of Stoker’s novel while distilling the sprawling Gothic tale into a fast-moving theatrical experience.
“There is something deliciously old-fashioned about gathering in a theater and being asked to use your imagination again,” Stuart said. “That is what we love about these radio productions. The audience becomes part of the storytelling.”
Gurnee resident Daniel Plumhoff returns to the role of the sinister Count Dracula.
“There are so many layers to Dracula,” Plumhoff said. “It’s a role I’ve wanted to play for as long as I can remember, and there’s always something new to discover in the character.”
Joining him is his father, Stephen Plumhoff, a veteran of numerous Improv Playhouse productions, as Dr. Seward. The father-son casting adds a little real-life fun to the battle against the count.
“Danny and I have always gotten along pretty well as father and son,” Stephen joked. “Now I finally get the opportunity to go after him onstage.”
SAG-AFTRA member and Lake Zurich resident Mia Hirschel portrays Mina, with Susan Kries of Vernon Hills as Lucy and Egon Schein of Libertyville as the formidable Professor Van Helsing. Rounding out the ensemble are Dan Ness of Palatine as Jonathan Harker, Ted Rafferty of Schaumburg as the captain of the ill-fated Demeter, and Lake Zurich resident Jerry Hirschel in multiple supporting roles.
Performances of “Dracula” are 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Oct. 16, 23 and 30; and Saturdays, Oct. 17 and 24, at the new Improv Playhouse Theater, 130 N. Milwaukee Ave., in downtown Libertyville. Advance tickets are $18.50 for adults, $16.50 for seniors 55 and older, and $12.50 for students. At-the-door tickets are $24 for adults, $20 for seniors, and $15 for students. “Dracula” is presented as a PG-rated theatrical production. Tickets and additional information are available at improvplayhouse.com or by calling 847-968-4529.
Once Dracula takes his final bow on Friday, Oct. 30, Improv Playhouse will transform its downtown theater for an entirely different kind of Halloween experience. On Saturday, Oct. 31, Improv Playhouse pivots from Gothic horror to interactive comedy and mystery with “I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse,” a Halloween-night murder mystery accompanied by a catered dinner from City Barbeque. Guests will find themselves in the middle of a comic postapocalyptic mystery in which the evening’s survivors must eat, investigate, interrogate and determine just what happened before they become the next victims.
“After five performances of ‘Dracula,’ we thought Halloween night deserved something completely different,” Stuart said. “Friday night belongs to the count. Saturday night, the zombies get the building. It gives audiences two very different ways to celebrate Halloween with us in downtown Libertyville.”
Details and reservations for “I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse” will be available through Improv Playhouse.