It’s that time again when howling wolves, moaning ghosts, mad scientists, and bloodthirsty vampires all gather for the annual Halloween festivities.

When Ethan Gibney was looking for a play to direct for the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, he found the perfect one for the season in Gordon Greenberg and Steven Rosen’s Dracula: A Comedy of Terror.

Irish playwright Bram Stoker’s seriously scary book has been the inspiration for numerous plays and film adaptations, and it has also opened the door for this topsy-turvy comedy. Gibney saw a chance to have fun while giving a tip of the hat to Stoker and his brilliant classic.

“A couple reasons I like this play. First, that it’s funny, which seems like an obvious answer, but we all need to laugh,” Gibney said. “I think the play does a good job of having fun with the source material while respecting it. It doesn’t just throw away the book and make fun of Dracula, the concept. It enjoys the book and revels in it. It is a comedy, but it keeps the emotional core of the book.”

Gibney argues that there are “a million play versions of Dracula,” but this one stays closest to the book.

“You have to remember that Bram Stoker’s book invented most of the things we know about vampires,” Gibney said. “There are certain things that were part of the lore—they can’t drink water or go out in the daylight. Dracula actually does go out in the daytime [in the book]. This brings a lot of genre awareness to it and plays with that. There are several times in the play where Dracula just says, ‘I’m a vampire,’ and everyone misses that because of the farce.”

The play is broad and silly, but it's still mindful of the book that launched an industry.

“One of my favorite things that is preserved from the book is that everyone forgets that there is a Texan in the book, a cowboy,” Gibney said. “He’s represented in the play, but he’s a sock puppet instead of a person.”

Six actors play a dozen roles. Gibney has some experience in this kind of production. He directed the frantic send-up of Hitchcock’s 39 Steps for the Brass Tacks Ensemble.

Two actors play one character, Dracula and Jonathan Harker, but the others play multiple roles at frantic speeds. The actors are enjoying the rehearsals.

“It’s been a hoot and a half,” said Kara Williams, who plays a female Dracula. “I like the way he winks at the audience, like nothing is being hidden.”

Abigail Copelia takes on three parts. She says she enjoys playing different roles.

“I’m trying to learn the accents and play three characters in the play. They all have different accents,” Copelia said. “It’s been fun having those different variations.”

Gender fluidity plays a big role in the comedy.

“The gender fluidity of it is fun, and I was really excited to put on my audition form that I wanted to try out for Dracula because of the opportunity not available in other shows or places,” said Williams. “It’s really a fun thing to play in a really grounded way.”

“The author says if you’re not playing with gender, you’re basically not doing the show right,” Gibney said.

In addition to Williams and Copelia, cast members are DelShawn Akpan, Chris Grimm, McKenna Forster, and Daniel Bizer-Cox.

Dracula: A Comedy of Terror will be staged at Ann Arbor Civic Theatre’s studio on Ann Street in Ann Arbor.

“The staging is fairly light, we’re doing it black-box style,” said Gibney. “Props will be scattered across the stage, and people grab them when they need them. My approach is that we’re not going to convince anyone in the audience that we’re not in the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, so why should we pretend we’re not here? I think it allows us to have more fun.”

Gibney says this Dracula is all about the laughs:

“It’s sort of a broad comedy. While it has emotional grounding, it doesn’t amount to much, so I hope the audience gets an evening of entertainment out of it, and I don’t think it’s bad for that to be the goal."

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently the managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit.   

"Dracula: A Comedy of Terror" will be presented at the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre’s Studio, 322 Ann Street, Ann Arbor, at 7:30 pm on October 24-25 and October 31-November 2. For tickets and more information, go to a2ct.org. On Halloween night, Ann Arbor Civic Theatre is presenting a random drawing for multisets of free tickets to shows for the 2025/26 season for anyone wearing a costume.