SINK YOUR TEETH INTO THIS

A gloriously excessive spectacle eventually
falls victim to an overdose of songs

The Nocturne Theatre in Glendale is quickly becoming one of my favorite venues in the City of Angels.

Justin & Melissa Meyer are masters of high theatricality and demigods of over-the-top razzle-dazzle, what I have lovingly dubbed “Kitchen Sink Center Stage Theatrics.” ¹ Their shows are enrapturing explosions of creativity, ingenuity and gleefully rampaging originality.

This is definitely the case with their current production of Dracula: The Musical, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and music by Frank Wildhorn. True to form, director/lighting designer Justin Meyer, drawing on Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Tom Holland’s 1985 cult favorite Fright Night, and a dash of Cirque du Soleil, has certainly chucked a couple of kitchen sinks on the stage, not to mention a walk-in shower and even a bidet.

And as if he didn’t have enough on his blood-splattered plate, Meyer also takes on the role (and coffin) of Dracula, with his wife and partner Melissa Meyer as co-director. Together they assure that Dracula: The Musical delivers up both pageantry and panache aplenty—a chorus of high-flying succubi (Lisa-Marie Burnside, Rachel Fictum, Kimberly Butler and the flightless Abhaya Krishnan-Jha), simply superb costumes, a bit of bug sex and billows of billowing mist.

The two Meyers have been ably assisted in this undead undertaking by the collected talents of vampiress aerialist and choreographer Burnside (along with Madam Meyer), costume/creature designer Tanya Cyr and costume builder Gavin Dietz, sound engineer Julia Vollstedt and sound designer Matt Meline, musical director Chris Wade and the Dracula Band: Lowell Wolfe (aptly named), Audrey Bean, and Romel Veal, all under the band mastery of Alonso Pirio.

And there is also amazing vocal talent on display in this production—Samantha Rose as Mina, the desire of Dracula’s deathless lust; AJ Castro as Mina’s devoted lover Jonathan Harker; Kelly Krippendorf as the doomed Lucy; Andrew Diego as the unhinged fly connoisseur Renfield; and Meyer himself in the titular role—all of whom serve up some truly lovely songs….

And yet.

Dracula: The Musical had its world premiere at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse in 2001. After a hugely successful run at that theatre, with Tom Hewitt as the singing count, the production opened on Broadway in 2004 and ran for a meager 154 performances, receiving primarily negative reviews.²

I suspect that the poor reception in New York was partly due to the show having originated on the West Coast (the Big Apple’s provincial chauvinism, you know), but there is the matter of a certain bar which I believe that musicals disregard to their peril. Consider the following:

West Side Story, 13 songs.
A Chorus Line, 15 songs.
The Rocky Horror Show, 20 songs.

Yes, there are exceptions to this, but they are few and far between.

The original production of Dracula: The Musical carried the weight of 29 songs. Oddly, this new, revised version at the Nocturne has upped the ante with a whopping 33 songs, putting the show’s running time (with intermission) at over three hours. Which, I am loath to admit, had me feeling as if I had joined the undead and wondering if there was earth from my place of birth (Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital) under my seat.

Still, though the production exceeded my paltry endurance, there is no denying that Dracula: The Musical is unquestionably an “E” ticket ride.

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photos courtesy of Nocturne Theatre

Dracula: The Musical
The Nocturne Theatre
The Nocturne Theatre, 324 North Orange Street in Glendale
select dates
ends on August 23, 2026
3 hours, with intermission
for tickets ($46.50–$75.50, including booking fee), visit The Nocturne Theatre

for more shows, visit Theatre in LA

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¹ In 1938, a New York critic wrote of an Orson Welles stage production that it had “everything but the kitchen sink.” The next night the curtain opened on Welles carrying a kitchen sink onto the stage.

² Later revised productions in Austria and South Korea met with both critical and financial success.