Dracula
Classic Stage Company
Bram Stoker’s gothic novel gets a girl-power
gloss from the playwright Kate Hamill, who
specializes in renovating classic works of lit-
erature to suit millennial sensibilities. On a
trip to Transylvania, the Englishman Jonathan
Harker (Michael Crane) arrives at the castle
of Dracula (Matthew Amendt), a nobleman
with a taste for white linen and human blood.
Meanwhile, Harker’s wife, Mina (Kelley
Curran), and her spunky friend Lucy (Jamie
Ann Romero) amuse themselves at an insane
asylum run by Lucy’s sweetheart, Dr. Seward
(Matthew Saldivar), until the Count and his
minions come for them, too. Hamill tries to
make a tale of female persecution into one of
female empowerment: the vampire hunter Dr.
Van Helsing is now a woman (Jessica Frances
Dukes), and so is the mental patient Renfield
(Hamill, screeching like a crow); Dracula is
“toxic” rather than sexy, and the other men are
cowards or dupes. Far duller than the novel, the
play manages to condescend to both contem-
porary women and their nineteenth-century
counterparts. Directed by Sarna Lapine, who
keeps the tone ping-ponging between “The
Importance of Being Earnest” and a budget
haunted house. In repertory with “Franken-
stein.”—Alexandra Schwartz (Through March 8.)
Fandango for Butterflies
Various locations
This warmhearted show, written by Andrea
Thome and inspired by interviews with un-
documented immigrants from Latin America,
is set in a church in lower Manhattan, where
friends come together to set aside their troubles
for an evening of song and dance. Among them
are Mariposa (Jen Anaya), who came to New
York from Mexico as a teen-ager and serves as
the group’s maternal figure, though her pre-
carious circumstances make her reluctant to
have a family of her own, and the comedic
Honduran cousins Rogelio (Carlo Albán) and
Elvin (Andrés Quintero), who are waiting for
a third relative making the dangerous journey
north. The pain inherent in these stories is
often exploited for flattening dramatic effect,
but the director, José Zayas, gives his actors the
dignity of joy, and lets them bloom. With music
by Sinuhé Padilla that will make you want to
sing along, and supertitles in Spanish.—A.S.
(The production is touring all five boroughs; see
engardearts.org/fandango for schedule. Through
March 28.)
Frankenstein
Classic Stage Company
The reason to see this slight adaptation of
Mary Shelley’s novel, written by Tristan Ber-
nays and directed by Timothy Douglas, comes
in the show’s first twenty minutes, when Steph-
anie Berry, as Frankenstein’s creature, stirs to
life. With remarkable physical expressiveness
and subtlety, Berry conveys the process by
which animal curiosity is molded into sen-
tience through sight, smell, and touch; her vul-
nerability will break your heart. The rest of this
eighty-minute show, which takes a SparkNotes
approach to its source material, feels like an
afterthought. The only other person onstage is
the oddly cast Rob Morrison, who does not so
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT EGINS MARCH 27
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EN RANTLEY,
MARY-LOUISE PARKER d DAVID MORSE’S
p rf rm c h v v r tir
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I HAD SEEN EFORE.
THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING MASTERPIECE.
THE ORIGINAL STARS WHO ROUGHT IT TO LIFE.
ON ROADWAY, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.
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