Dracula: Spellbinding

Jennifer Conlee, co-news editor

The story of the King of the Undead, Count Dracula, has frightened people for more than a century since Bram Stoker first wrote the novel. 

Since then, community theatres have loved to perform the story as a stage play.

Lubbock Community Theatre chose to produce the play for the fall season, and have once again brought another magnificent performance to the Boston Avenue Theatre. 

The story of the famous vampire is set in London, where Dracula has come to haunt the beautiful Lucy Seward, played by Elysse Lenore West, a familiar face on the community stage.  West has been seen most recently in “The Hot L Baltimore,” “The Mousetrap,” and “A Christmas Carol: Scrooge and Marley.”  West, who never fails to amaze, played the part of the young woman who is becoming controlled by the count.

Jay Brown, who was in “Dancing at Lughnasa” for the 2004 season and has directed many plays in his career, played her father, Dr. Seward. 

Brown, the artistic and managing director for the Lubbock Community Theatre, shined in his role as a doctor who was willing to try anything to save his daughter.  When Lucy began to act the same way her friend Mina had, he begins to worry and hires Abraham Van Helsing, a specialist who realizes that the cause of Lucy’s sickness is indeed the attack of a vampire.

Wayne Jennings, a long time veteran of the stage, played the part of Van Helsing, and was extremely convincing as the Dutch man who believed in vampires.

Other actors in the performance included: theatre regular Pam Brown as Miss Wells, Lucy’s maid; Matthew Shipley as Jonathan Harker, Lucy’s beloved and very protective fiancé; and David Armendariz as Butterworth, the attendant to Renfeild.

Samuel Hatchett played the part of R. M. Renfield, the psychotic man under Dr. Seward’s care.  It is discovered that he is Dracula’s apprentice, who will become one of the undead, though he struggles against it.  His performance provided comic relief, and Hatchett is one who should return to the stage soon.

“Dracula” opens with an evening in a small town outside of London.  Dr. Seward and John Harker are discussing the illness of Harker’s fiancée Lucy.  We soon learn that her best friend, Mina, had recently died from a similar illness.

Their conversation turns to their new neighbor, Count Dracula, who is renovating Carfax, the castle nearby.  Harker has disliked the man since their first meeting, but he is led to believe that he is a good man when the doctor claims that Dracula has offered to donate blood for a transfusion that Lucy needs.

Normal doctors cannot solve her illness, so Van Helsing is summoned. He claims that a vampire caused the illness after he views the two white marks on her neck.

Once the fiancé and father allow themselves to believe Van Helsing, they are able to find where he sleeps and track him down.  It seems as though he will get away with turning Lucy into his queen, but he is found at the last moment in his lair under the Seward’s own home.

From the beginning of the play to the scene of Dracula’s dramatic demise, Lubbock Community Theatre’s performance proved to be excellent, and I give them four out of five stars.