Frank Langella played the lead in this production, which used the play-text by Hamilton Deane and John Balderston. The last time this play had been brought to Broadway, the lead had been Bela Lugosi. Deane's 1924 version of the play had several significant productions with different casts, including the debut production at the Grand Theatre in Derby, the initial London production at the Little Theatre, and a continuation in London at the Duke of York's Theatre, with the following casts: [10] [29] Casts for productions of the original 1924 version

Theatre Magazine complimented Peterson's performance as Lucy in the 1927 Broadway production, calling her "the lightmotif of Dracula ... [whose] fair comeliness shines through every scene like a flood of sunlight in a chamber of horrors". [43] Adaptations [ edit ] Radio adaptation [ edit ]

Dracula is a stage play written by the Irish actor and playwright Hamilton Deane in 1924, then revised by the American writer John L. Balderston in 1927. It was the first authorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. After touring in England, the original version of the play appeared at London's Little Theatre in July 1927, where it was seen by the American producer Horace Liveright. Liveright asked Balderston to revise the play for a Broadway production that opened at the Fulton Theatre in October 1927. This production starred Bela Lugosi in his first major English-speaking role.

The revised version of the play went on a national tour of the United States and replaced the original version in London. It influenced many subsequent adaptations, including the popular 1931 film adaptation starring Lugosi. A 1977 Broadway revival featured art designs by Edward Gorey and starred Frank Langella. It won the Tony Award for Best Revival and led to another movie version, also starring Langella. a b DVD Documentary The Road to Dracula (1999) and audio commentary by David J. Skal, Dracula: The Legacy Collection (2004), Universal Home Entertainment catalog # 24455 The original cast of the revival included Frank Langella as Count Dracula (later replaced by Raúl Juliá), Alan Coates as Jonathan Harker, Jerome Dempsey as Abraham Van Helsing, Dillon Evans as Dr. Seward, Baxter Harris as Butterworth, Richard Kavanaugh as R. M. Renfield, Gretchen Oehler as Miss Wells, and Ann Sachs as Lucy Seward. [19] The show won two Tony Awards for Most Innovative Production of a Revival and Best Costume Design (Edward Gorey). A voracious reader and collector of everything from obscure Victorian novels to translations of The Tale of Genji, from Symbolist poetry to books on napkin folding to the works of Carl Jung and George Gurjieff, and, apparently, everything in between, Gorey was also a connoisseur of popular television programs and obscure films. He had encyclopedic knowledge of Japanese cinema and the work of pioneers such as Louis Feuillade, the inventor of the serial thriller, whose silent films, such as the Fantomas series, clearly inform Gorey’s interiors and street scenes. He seems to have so thoroughly internalized an astonishingly wide range of sources that we can find allusions in his books to the works of Max Ernst, Paul Klee, police photographers, and 19th-century illustrators, along with flavors of Buster Keaton’s films, Lewis Carroll’s and Ivy Compton-Burnett’s books, Kabuki theater, and much, much more, including parodies of Agatha Christie’s mysteries and the pseudonymous French pornographer Pauline Réage’s The Story of O. Gorey claimed that he knew “a little bit about a lot of things,” a disclaimer that belied his extraordinarily well-furnished mind and his depth of knowledge of recherché subjects. Eder, Richard (21 October 1977). "Theater: An Elegant, Bloodless Dracula". The New York Times. p.C3.

University Libraries

Leonard, William Torbert (1981). Theatre: Stage to Screen to Television: Volume I: A-L. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-1374-2. OCLC 938249384. Deane's Dracula premiered on 15 May 1924 at the Grand Theatre in Derby, England. [9] Deane had originally intended to play the title role himself but opted for the role of Van Helsing. This production toured England for three years before settling in London, where it opened at the Little Theatre in the Adelphi on 14 February 1927. [10] It later transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre and then the Prince of Wales Theatre to accommodate larger audiences. [11] Broadway production [ edit ] The first Broadway production opened at the Fulton Theatre in 1927. In New York, Gorey soon became a passionate admirer of the New York City Ballet and George Balanchine, whom he described as “the greatest influence on me…Everything he ever said about art, in the larger sense, was only too true.” Gorey attended every performance of all of Balanchine’s ballets until the choreographer’s death in 1983. That year, Gorey, who had divided his time between midtown Manhattan and Cape Cod, summering with family, moved permanently to the Cape, “an act of aestheticism worthy of Oscar Wilde,” according to Stephen Schiff in a New Yorker profile.

If you want to see them in person, you can swing on by to the Special Collections on the third floor of the Main Library. Otherwise, on October 28 th, 11:00am – 3:00pm, we will be hosting a Halloween Pop-Up Exhibit on the first floor of the Main Library, where the complete construction of Dracula: A Toy Theatre will be the star of the exhibit, along with a showcase of some of our spookiest comics and fanzines. Here at the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections, we not only have a copy of Scribner’s publication of Dracula: A Toy Theatre, but two copies of the Pomegranate publication as well.Kabatchnik, Amnon (2009). Blood on the Stage, 1925–1950: Milestone Plays of Crime, Mystery, and Detection. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6963-9. Grams, Martin Jr. (October 2013). "The Quest for the Unholy Grail" (PDF). Radiogram. Society To Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety and Comedy. pp.8–13.