Deadly Dracula

The 1927 stage version of “Dracula,” which opens at the Interplayers Ensemble this weekend, is no jokey, campy Halloween confection.

This is deadly serious stuff. The stuff of vampire legend.

The classic Bram Stoker story is about possession, surrender, redemption and, of course, an evil count with fangs.

This Interplayers production stars New York actor Michael Maher in the title role and features John Hofland’s spooky-castle set design. Expect to see some smoke and other effects.

The stage play, by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, is the stuff of Broadway legend.

It was conceived in 1924 when Deane, a London actor, acquired the rights from the Stoker family. Deane had already had a success with “Frankenstein,” in which he played the monster, and he was looking for a follow-up. He adapted Stoker’s story for the stage and took the Van Helsing role for himself. It was a London smash and then toured Great Britain for nearly three years.

A vacationing American producer caught a performance and bought the American rights. He hired Balderston, a young journalist, to Americanize the dialogue and punch up the story. For the title role, he hired a 44-year-old Hungarian actor who had recently arrived in the U.S.

His name was Bela Lugosi.

The resulting gothic fang-fest ran for 261 performances on Broadway and then went on the road for two years. Hollywood soon bought the rights and it went on to have an even more storied history on the big screen.

Tod Browning directed the screen version in 1931, with Lugosi reprising the title role. From the moment Lugosi introduced himself on screen by saying, in his thick accent, “I … am … Dracu-la,” the world had acquired a new symbol of evil.

From that point on, Dracula has been practically a superstar of horror. The story has been reprised many times on film, most recently when Francis Ford Coppola remade it as “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” in 1992.

The Deane/Balderston stage version has endured as well. It was revived on its 50th anniversary in 1977, with Frank Langella in the title role. Once again, it was a smash. It ran for more than two years and spawned another movie version.

The original play ended up changing the lives of several of the principals involved. Balderston went on to have a successful screenwriting career, including another horror classic, 1932’s “The Mummy.” But he also wrote more highbrow fare including “The Last of the Mohicans,” “The Prisoner of Zenda,” “Berkeley Square,” “Lives of a Bengal Lancer” and “Gaslight.” He received Oscar nominations for the latter two.

Lugosi, of course, went on to become one of Hollywood’s trademark villains. He identified so strongly with his most famous role that by the 1940s he was giving interviews while lying in a coffin. He died in 1956 and was buried in his Dracula cape.

The Interplayers version is directed by artistic director Nike Imoru. In addition to Maher in the title role, the cast includes Caryn Hoaglund, Todd Wallace, Damon Abdallah, Craig Dingle, John Ulman, David Seitz and Kate Parker.