FringeNYC 2013: The Nightmare 'Dream'
Lord, what food these mortals be! Stoker's Dracula collides with A Midsummer Night's Dream in a puckishly 'biting' woodland mashup where no ruffled neck is safe. Join us, if you dare, for the ORIGINAL douchey teen vampire drama.
Official production websiteShow details/ticketing at FringeNYC
Review by Carissa Cordes · August 11, 2013
The Nightmare ‘Dream’ came about as playwright Neal Freeman discovered the similarities with Bram Stoker’s Dracula while he was toying about with creating a gothic Midsummer Night’s Dream, so he decided to combine the two texts.
The play begins with the Duke, Theseus (Jan-Peter Pedross), giving a soliloquy about visiting Renfield (Kyle Metzger). Egeus (Greg Horton) enters dragging his daughter, Hermia (Melanie Hopkins), and her suitors Demetrius (Montgomery Sutton) and Lysander (Jack Berenholtz). They have their scene in which Hermia is forced to choose Demetrius or death. They speak of Helena (Minna Taylor) who has been sick, pale and not sleeping well. Hermia and Lysander decide to run away together, but Helena enters acting tragic because of Demetrius’ rejection and because she is terrified of the night. Meanwhile, in the woods, The Vampire King and Queen, Oberon (Patrick Toon) and Titania (Akyiaa Wilson), are having a sinister and bloodthirsty argument about a changeling boy. Oberon stumbles across Demetrius and Helena having their chase scene and Oberon drinks Helena’s blood. Then Oberon stumbles across Lysander and Hermia sleeping. He drinks Hermia’s blood and puts Titania and her attendants (Eli Sibley and Bethany Geraghty) under a spell so they fall in love with Lysander. By the end, it really does turn into a bloodbath and a Nightmare of a Dream.
Horton plays Egeus/The Doctor with gusto and Jan-Peter Pedross as Theseus, makes quite the comedic pairing with Horton. Metzger is unpredictable and fascinating to watch as Renfield/Puck. The lovers are well suited to their parts. Akyiaa Wilson as Titania/Vampire Queen is quite fierce. Not to fear, the Pyramus and Thisby scene is inserted in a manner most enjoyable. The score/sound design is sadly not credited in the program, but it added immense layers to a play without any scenery.
The script, mashing the original texts of Stoker and Shakespeare together, mostly works well. There are a few transitions that are not great, mainly because of the iambic verse and rhyming couplets in Shakespeare’s text. With the heightened language and the over-dramatic style of acting this is more of a fun piece then something that’s meant to scare the audience. However, there are some gags and homoerotic jokes that do not come out of the text and steal the scene, distracting from the text and story. Trusting the text and taking the story more seriously would have been more enjoyable to engage with as an audience member. That being said, this is still a treat for lovers of vampires and Shakespeare.
Preview: Interviews with Artists from The Nightmare 'Dream'
We're asking artists from each show to answer questions about themselves and their work to help our readers get a detailed advance picture of the festival:
All About My Show · Neal Freeman (Writer)
- Complete this sentence: My show is the only one in FringeNYC that...?
mashes a Shakespeare play with a vampire novel! - What do you think this show is about? What will audiences take away with them after seeing it?
The Nightmare 'Dream' envisions Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as "bitten" by the novel Dracula. The resulting play is the "undead" work that might result. The play uses text only from the two source works. I think audiences will be surprised how well they work together! - Why did you want to write this show?
My original idea was to create a production of Midsummer set in a gothic horror mode, to give a playful wink to the idea that "fairies" for Elizabethans were actually kind of scary. As I began to locate the characters in a horror world, I realized there were many ties to Bram Stoker's characters in Dracula as I knew them. After discovering that Dracula was in the public domain, the idea was born and the rest, as they say, is history. - Who are some of the people who helped you create this show, and what were their important contributions to the finished product?
I'm delighted to collaborate with my former Gallery Players colleague Heather Curran who is producing the show. - Which character from a Shakespeare play would like your show the best: King Lear, Puck, Rosalind, or Lady Macbeth -- and why?
Pretty sure Titus Andronicus would dig our Bloody Shakespeare approach.
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