The Vampire Musical: Broadway’s Greatest Money Sucker

Le Bal des Vampires - Photo © Detlev Overmann

On paper, the mythos of the Vampire should be a straightforward transfer to the New York stage. An inherently melodramatic story archetype, the thousands of pop culture interpretations should lend themselves to a comparable number of theatrical adaptations. This, however, has proven time and again not to be the case. To celebrate this Halloween season, I will be breaking down the history of each musical that has come to the Broadway stage (with a couple of Off-Broadway and Regional pit stops) in which Vampires have been the unholy name of the game.  By examining the past failures, I believe the answer to successfully raising this archetype from the grave can be found.

(Sorry folks, but the glory of Bela Lugosi and Frank Langella as Dracula in play adaptations won’t be on this list - this is a strictly musical affair.)

First up, Carmilla: A Vampire’s Tale. Debuting at La MaMa in 1970, Ben Johnston and Wilford Leach turned Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella about a female vampire into a multimedia opera.

Margaret Benczak and Nancy Heikin in Carmilla - Photo © Michael Draper

The video projections were considered ahead of their time, and the supporting characters popped out as wooden faces from within the couch the leads were sitting on. The show was given a lukewarm reception initially but was revived several times by the ETC Company in repertory with La MaMa.

Overall, it was a successful, if not financially profitable, production. Carmilla left a promising impression for investors looking to capitalize on the success of cult productions in the mid to late 1970s, which brought one of the most iconic Vampires to the stage — for better or for worse.

Dracula was first brought to the Tri-State Area theatrical scene in December 1987, when Possessed: The Dracula Musical opened and closed in Teaneck, New Jersey. This adaptation has had far from a laudable legacy — with lyrics such as “Love sucks / it drains out all your blood / Love sucks / you better listen to me Bud / And leave it to the donkeys, the doggies and the ducks (quack quack)” set to eighties synthesizers on a nearly bare stage, it is hardly life-changing art. Bram Stoker’s classic was transplanted to modern England, where Dracula’s slave Renfield was an unhinged rock musician, who had been ensnared when Dracula posed as a record promoter.

The production was low-budget and unfocused, with mime sequences, and chase scenes. In particular, a scene featuring athletic prancing made up the majority of the second act plot. Perhaps Alvin Klein said it best in his review for the Times: “Perhaps there are no bad ideas for musicals, only bad musicals, like this one.”

The “bad” moniker from the Times attached to Possessed put the fear of death in producers, and a substantial mounting of a Vampire based musical was not seen in the Tri-State Area for 15 years. As musicals dove into fairy tales and American folk tales, the stories of the Vampire were shuffled off to the wayside, with the legacy of Possessed overshadowing the initial cult success of Carmilla. It took a highly successful German adaptation of a 1967 Roman Polanski spoof film to finally bring the genre back to Broadway, with critically disastrous results.

Dance of the Vampires came to Broadway in 2002, following two very successful runs in Vienna and Stuttgart, under the name Tanz Der Vampire. It was decided that a star lead in the role of Count von Krolock would be just the trick to bring it to Broadway; feelers were put out to names as diverse as David Bowie, John Travolta, and Richard Gere, but ultimately, the team came to an agreement with Michael Crawford, best known as the originating lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. A cast rapidly shaped up around Crawford, with Mandy Gonzalez and Max von Essen in the young lead roles of Alfred and Sarah, René Auberjonois as Professor Abronsius, Ron Orbach as Chagal, and Leah Hocking as Magda, among others. The score was mostly left intact, with new English lyrics, including, most memorably, Vampire in Love, a lyric rewrite set to the music of Steinman’s Top 40 Hit, Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Mandy Gonzalez and Michael Crawford in Dance of the Vampires, Photo © Paul Kolnik)

Although the show initially sold a strong advance based on Crawford's name, negative word of mouth spread like wildfire. Internet forums were dedicated to following the journey of the show, and Dance of the Vampires became one of the first musicals to be publically lambasted on the internet in addition to critical reviews. The show was torn to shreds almost immediately. On January 25, 2003, after 56 performances, Dance of the Vampires closed, and according to The New York Times, it was "one of the costliest failures in Broadway history," losing roughly $12 million, easily eclipsing the infamous musical Carrie’s $8 million.

So what was the theatre community to do following one of the largest box office losses of a Broadway production? How about immediately open a new version of the now infamous Dracula, this time written by one of the most critically divisive composers of the late 20th century?

In 2004, Frank Wildhorn, best known for Jekyll & Hyde, got his fangs into Stoker’s classic story, folding in millions of dollars, artistic nudity, and his distinctively melodramatic tunes, which included lyrics such as “Give me your mouth upon my mouth / Give me your skin to savor / Give me your breath upon my breast / Taste our immortal flavor.”

Kelli O’Hara and Melissa Errico in Dracula, Photo © Joan Marcus

Hundreds of yards of cloth were draped over the set, but the showstopper was the shedding of clothes by Dracula and Lucy Westenra (played by a young Kelli O’Hara), except during matinees when school groups came in. Ben Brantley summed up the general feelings on the production, saying, “And here it is, looming like a giant stuffed bat on a stick, the easiest target on Broadway.” Dracula lost $7.5 million before shutting down within five months of its August 2004 Broadway opening.

And finally, we come to the most recent Vampiric adaptation, which attempted to capitalize on one of the most successful Vampire franchises of all time: Lestat.

Hugh Panaro and Carolee Carmello in Lestat, Photo © Paul Kolnik

Lestat was the highest-earning pre-Broadway production in San Francisco history (beating out Wicked and Cats). The San Francisco version had elaborate stage effects and production values and included projected images illustrating the titular character’s story as he wrote his memoirs. Every time blood was sucked, the music went shrill as abstract shapes, blood cells, and doll faces were projected in quick succession, evoking a mid 90’s grunge music video.

This effect, combined with an earnestly campy sensibility, had NYC hopeful that Lestat would be the musical to prove the Rule of Three — as the third Vampire Musical in five years, surely it would learn from its predecessors and find a way to make the material sing. Its producers, however, weren’t as confident in its future and insisted on several adjustments when it transferred from San Francisco to New York.

The Broadway version of Lestat was more interpretive and used fewer projections, in addition to cutting quite a few plot elements. Fans of the show were appalled by these changes, which they considered sacrilege to Rice’s original text. By altering the core relationships of the story, the heart of the show collapsed, and what was left was a weak shadow.

The musical began previews on Broadway at the Palace Theater on March 25, 2006, and closed on May 28, 2006, after 33 previews and 39 performances. Elton John, monumentally embarrassed by the failure, has blocked the cast album and sheet music from publication in an attempt to keep the long-suffering Lestat six feet under.

So what is it about Vampire musicals that has spelled critical and financial doom since the original mounting of Carmilla? Quite simply, it is the appeal of the concept. Particularly at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the propagation of Vampire-related media was at an all-time high. The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Chronicles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Vampire Diaries and the emo music sub-genre headed by My Chemical Romance kept Vampires in the public eye, and everyone wanted a piece of the proverbial blood pie. With each mounting came more eager hands, and when the budgets blossomed, the original creative voices behind the productions were forced to the wayside. Aesthetics and agendas took precedence over storytelling, and no amount of glamour could cover up the stench of a dead story.

Vampire musicals can work, and I have faith that one day they will. But in order to overcome the curse, the stories must be returned to their La MaMa roots — small budget stories with big-budget ideas that have to be expressed through words and wit. If you take away a vampire’s charms, you strip them of their intrigue, and all you are left with is an oversized and overdressed pest.

Maggie Hall is a Musical Theatre Historian and teacher. She can be reached @stardustschild for question or comment.