BWW Interviews: Alley Theatre Artistic Director Gregory Boyd Talks The Original Vampire Play - DRACULA

I'm a lucky, lucky girl. In this interview, Alley Theatre Artistic Director, Gregory Boyd and I discuss the deep roots and broad influence of DRACULA, the genius and uniqueness of Edward Gorey, and, just for kicks, what it's like to work with David Hyde Pierce.

BWW: The Alley's advertisements for the play call it a satire. In what way is it a satire?

Gregory Boyd: Everything Edward Gorey did had a sense of satire about it. Gorey was a very sophisticated and eccentric American artist, and his take on things grotesque and mysterious has an ironic, sometimes hidden, smile in it, always. But it has nothing to do with 'camp' or 'sending the material up' - it's not a 'comedy' version, a parody, or anything like that. It's taken seriously - and it's very engaging and delightful to watch because of that.

BWW: The plot of the stage play differs from the original novel - Bram Stoker's Dracula. What affect does this have on the final narrative?

Gregory Boyd: The Balderston/Deane play is based on the 1924 stage version done in London, and is, perhaps even beyond the original Bram Stoker novel, certainly the most influential version in terms of its impact on the culture.

Though you wouldn't necessarily know that today - where everything from True Blood to Lestat to Let the Right One In, has sprung from this original bloodline, and they all drink from it.

Stoker was a theatre worker his entire career - he was manager at Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre, which is sort of like saying he worked for the Orson Welles or Laurence Olivier of his time. Irving was an actor/manager - or in today's terms an actor/director/producer - the ultimate triple hyphenate. Stoker has theatre in his veins, as it were. So the novel was always destined for the theatre, and Stoker even tried to get Irving to play the name part onstage. That didn't happen, but Stoker's widow, Florence, was a tiger when it came to exploiting the story in the theatre. The 1924 version morphed into the 1927 Broadway version (making a star of Bela Lugosi) and later platformed the famous 1931 film - though it's very different in its storytelling.

The Count is a shape-shifter, and so is his story.

The play is more of a mystery play than a horror play - though there are elements of each genre circling all the time. Transylvania scenes are jettisoned and the focus is, as it should be in any version, I believe, on the characters. These characters are almost mythological by now - the Vampire King, the Victim, the Lunatic, The Doctor, the Hero, the Vampire Hunter - and, like in the Greek plays - and I make no apology for the comparison - it's a real pleasure to watch the different versions of the story ring changes on the characters in it, even as they struggle with ultimate evil. It's great fun to see the story unfold this way. So as different as it is in some important respects from the novel, it is the "ur-version" in the theatre - and it had never been produced in the way the Gorey designs transformed it.

BWW: You must have a long list of plays you want to produce at the Alley Theatre. Why did you choose to produce DRACULA this season?

Gregory Boyd: Lots of things came together. We had the perfect cast in the current Alley company - we had a proscenium stage that allowed us to recreate the soaring, huge, 30-foot-tall Gorey designs. And since I am a big fan of all the versions of this story - from the cheesy to the classy - this combination of resources made this irresistible. And it's October.

BWW: From its inception, audiences have been unsure whether to take this play seriously or humorously. One review from 1927 called it, "only a tiny step from the devilish to the ridiculous." Another said, "Much of the eerie horror has been lost." The Times said, "Most of us jumped in our seats at least once in every act." What do you think of these characterizations of the play? How much thought did you put into bringing out the horror of the play versus the comedy?

Gregory Boyd: I think that reviewer was the same one who thought Ibsen's GHOSTS "belonged in the gutter." So I always think it dangerous to quote those opinions. The play is great fun and a thrill to experience in this Gorey-fied context. But then again, I think Alien is great fun to watch. As is a good production of GHOSTS, too.

BWW: What were some of the challenges of directing this play, and how did you problem solve?

Gregory Boyd: The first thing we realized is that it's not simply a potboiler - that is, a genre thriller of its time. It's built like a brick s**t-house, in fact, as a horror/mystery play it might well be the original brick-****house. So you don't look down at it, you don't patronize it, or treat it as silliness. And at the same time, you're aware of how famous the story is, and one tries to recreate the original's surprises and suspense, and sense of "what happens next" - always - always look at it through the idea of what do the characters do next. That's what the story hangs on - in the novel too of course - the characters are everything. And it works astonishingly well.

BWW: In response to the criticisms we just discussed (among other things), Florence Stoker commissioned a new, more serious play from Charles Morrell in 1927. Even with its serious tone and Shakespearean references, it was unsuccessful. Yet, this particular production not only had a long run in the '20s, but in 1977 it was revived, won two Tony Awards, then closed after 925 performances. Now, in 2014, it's being performed at the Alley. It has endured for almost a century. Do you have any thoughts as to why?

Gregory Boyd: Have you read the play Florence commissioned? It's dreadful. For the 1927 version, Balderston transformed Deane's work into something very much more theatrical. Some things were changed quite a bit - The 1924 London version had a Texan (female) gunslinger in it with a sort of ridiculous way of speaking. That was changed (thankfully). And much else.

BWW: How would you describe Edward Gorey's set and costume design?

Gregory Boyd: The question is often asked why audiences seldom see important artists from other fields create stage designs for the theatre. There are some exceptions of course - Picasso, Chagall, David Hockney and others have designed for the stage (though chiefly opera and ballet) - but it remains true that few painters etc. have succeeded in the theatre. The answer is, I think, that most visual artists strive to complete a finished work - and design for the stage is by definition "unfinished," since it requires the moving actors, the other elements of design, and the presence of the audience to be complete. Many painters shy away from adding things to the experience of the viewer, recoiling from the idea as a vampire from wolf-bane.

Gorey, in this work especially, is an exception. As an artist, he is a particular kind of visual stylist, and as an illustrator, he is more - a born story-teller.

Gorey's gothic visual style and underhanded sense of humor is perfect for the play - and brings grandeur to it too. I love the sense that as the curtain rises of the first act set, Dr. Seward's Library, a massive black and white, pen and ink tour de force, the audience immediately feels that the virtuous characters have lost the battle already - there are bats and bat-wings everywhere - in the wallpaper, in the architecture, the pediments, the columns, in the patterns in the carpets, in the furniture, in the vaulting that goes up and up like "the beehive tomb at Mycenae." Dracula is already, before his appearance, "in the house." Gorey's sense of drama and scale is matched with an ironic touch and always tinged with beauty too, I think. Every stage design has a certain relationship with the play it interprets, and Gorey's take on this play is singularly his, and yet embraces the Dracula story in a new way, while remaining hugely enamored, maybe even besotted, with a love of theatre and the stage - and what it uniquely can achieve.

BWW: It seems to me that Edward Gorey is concerned with emotion and mood rather than realism. Do you think this is a fair assessment, and do you find this to be true of his designs for DRACULA?

Gregory Boyd: Gorey claimed to have read the novel Dracula as a young child - and he claimed that it, along with Alice in Wonderland were the greatest influences on his work. After the age of six, he thought, influences were irrelevant. He's not interested in the battle between good and evil - Gorey is interested in the conflict between the comfortable and the sinister - someone said that back in the 1980's, and I think it's a excellent viewpoint. You could almost say it about Hitchcock. Or Harold Pinter.

BWW: Do you have any comment on the following quote from Edward Gorey?

"I thought the whole Dracula thing was perfect nonsense. Since I was in on it from its inception, I think I can say with authority that I don't think anybody knew what they were doing. It started out on a stage that was on one of those raised platforms in a grammar school gymnasium in Nantucket. For some reason, it caught on down there. Artistically, it was a hodgepodge to end all hodgepodges. I knew nothing about set design. It was just one of those flukes that worked quite well. Of course, it made me a lot of money. It made everybody a lot of money. For some extraordinary reason, I was given a piece of the show."

Gregory Boyd: Gorey often said that he did it for the money - and that at a certain point he didn't want to watch it because he hadn't been allowed to design the usher's uniforms! So, he said a lot of different things about it. It made him (more) rich and famous to be sure - and on a certain level, I'm sure he loved it all. And on a certain unconscious level he couldn't help making it extraordinary and beautiful. Because he was a genius.

BWW: OK, so this question may be just for me. Please tell me what it was like working with David Hyde Pierce.

Gregory Boyd: David is so smart, funny, inventive and connected as an actor (heart to mind to hand) that it was a terrific pleasure. He played Khlestakov in a production of THE INSPECTOR GENERAL that I had a great time directing at Williamstown - We laughed a lot and were thoughtful a lot - and he was inspiringly creative every day. There was a lot of complicated physical comedy, knockabout, song-and-dance, and moments of real feeling and inner truth - so he was the ideal actor and perfect casting for a wonderful part in a great, wild play. He works very hard in rehearsal - and makes performing it look like effortless fun. That's the hardest thing to do.

Tickets to DRACULA, THE ORIGINAL VAMPIRE PLAY start at $26. All tickets are available for purchase at alleytheatre.org, at the Alley Theatre Box Office, 615 Texas Avenue, or by calling 713.220.5700. Groups of 10 or more can receive special concierge services and select discounts by calling 713.220.5700 and asking for the group sales department.

ALLEY THEATRE @ UH
The Wortham Theatre is located just off Cullen Boulevard on UH's main campus inside the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts building (also called building 507 on a UH campus map), which also houses the UH School of Theatre & Dance. Free designated parking for Alley patrons will be actively monitored and patrolled by campus security for all performances and is located at campus entrance 16 off Cullen Boulevard, just across the street from the theatre building. The best address to use for online maps and directions to the UH theatre is 4116 Elgin, Houston TX 77004.

Photos and promotional poster courtesy of Alley Theatre

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