Friday, August 20, 2004

JURY'S STILL OUT ON IF IT'S BETTER THAN KELSEY GRAMMER'S "MACBETH:" In our continuing effort to bring you bad reviews from around the world of entertainment, we branch out and offer you theatre reviews of the latest from New York. "Dracula: The Musical" opened last night, and the papers are already running out of "suck" puns to invoke in connection with it.

The New York Post says:

"Dracula" is dreadfully bad, but falls short of the awfulness that would lift it to the level of fun camp. . . . The book, such as it is, rarely rises above the level of cliché, except for such utterances as: "I ain't been on tenterhooks like this since that night we were waiting for the tiger to come for that tethered goat down in Sumatra!". . . This may be the first version of Dracula in which he's killed not so much by a stake to the heart as by an insipid ballad.

The Washington Post?

What "Dracula, the Musical" vividly demonstrates is that it may be time to drive a stake through the whole overexposed vampire genre. Fans and commentators have always remarked on the Count's fatal powers of attraction. Who knew that included the ability to bore you to death?

The Associated Press?
"Dracula, The Musical" is an anemic, inert attempt to make the world's most famous vampire sing. And what takes place on stage at Broadway's Belasco Theatre is enough to send the poor guy flying back to Transylvania, bat wings flapping.
The topper may be Ben Brantley in The New York Times:

[The show has] all the animation, suspense and sex appeal of a Victorian waxworks in a seaside amusement park. . . . [It] isn't simply bad, which is an aesthetic state of being that is kind of fun if you're in the right mood. (Gee, remember the ripely terrible "Dance of the Vampires"?) It is bad and boring.

Closing date not yet scheduled, but "Carrie" closed in less than a week, so buy your tickets now.

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