[Sidebar] November 13 - 20, 1997
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Horrors!

St. Andrew's Eve is a theatrical page-turner

by Bill Rodriguez

ST. ANDREW'S EVE, by James D'Entremont. Directed by Victor W. Lavenstein Jr. With Joanna Liao, Ralph Stokes, Halley Lavenstein, Terrence Shea, and Marie Hennedy. At NewGate Theatre through November 15.

What is this tendency around Halloween, an autumnal coping mechanism that makes us seek out scary tales? NewGate Theatre has indulged more than once in the juiciest sub-genre of all, the vampire tale -- chock-full of delicious hemosexual subtext -- to chilling effect. Now they've outdone themselves, staging an ambitious premiere of St. Andrew's Eve, by James D'Entremont.

The wonderful Gothic extravagance will be quite an evening's indulgence for some, a treat along the lines of hunkering down for a dark and stormy weekend with a stack of Anne Rice novels. The charming play runs just under four hours, including its two intermissions. It has to start at 7:30 in order to get you out by 11:30, a prospect that could send many casual theatergoers fleeing.

But, believe it or not, it's worth sticking around for. This play is as lyrical as it is lengthy, leavened by humor, and eventually becomes a real theatrical page-turner. It is a loose adaptation of Carmilla, the 1872 gothic novel by J.S. LeFanu, an Irish folklorist. Boston playwright D'Entremont says in his program notes that he wanted to simulate "the scope and texture of a large Victorian novel." A tall order, as well as a brave or foolhardy one in our age of sound-bite sensibilities. So St. Andrew's Eve is leisurely with a vengeance. The vampire tale proper, and the susspenseful action, doesn't even begin until the last minutes of the first act.

The playwright is banking on getting us fascinated enough with his characters that we're interested even when their banter isn't advancing the story. They may be Victorian stock characters, but they are drawn with individuality and, on occasion, humor.

Laura (Joanna Liao) is the pure young victim, who narrates and frames the story in bracketing scenes, set in a sanitarium. Her father is the imperious Kendrick Moore (Ralph Stokes), a mercantile bloodsucker who made his fortune supplying munitions containers in the Civil War (an Americanizing touch by the playwright). They travel from New York to the forest-shrouded castle where, years before, Laura's mother contracted a curious weakening malady that soon killed her. Moore wants solitude to write a book on successful business practices.

Our main vampire, pale and frail per tradition, is Carmilla (Halley Lavenstein). She is left unconscious with the Moores at Schloss Augenwald under mysterious circumstances and soon grows attached to Laura, if you get the drift. From that point the plot centers around whether Laura will weaken and join the undead before Carmilla strengthens sufficiently to be able to venture out into daylight and become mortal once again. That dynamic alone makes this variation on the vampire theme more engrossing than the usual adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula (written 15 years after Carmilla).

There is a gripping story-within-the-story of a massacre that took place at the castle 400 years earlier, which Carmilla and her mother were forced to witness. After that, they were walled into a blood-soaked escape tunnel, which triggered their vampirism. Several set pieces decorate the storyline to delightful effect. There is a tipsy man-to-man conversation between Moore and Laura's wealthy but wimpy American suitor (Terrence Shea); the crude Moores talk about the rump on a stained-glass Eve that nearly gives the lad the vapors. The prissy governess Miss Price (Marie Hennedy) says she uses foreign expressions "only to express notions foreign to my nature." D'Entremont has written plenty of such dialogue, both rococo in diction to fit the period and entertaining on-target to fit the characters.

With the exception of Laura and Carmilla, the 14 other characters are played by half as many actors. Under the direction of Victor W. Lavenstein Jr., this becomes a plus, allowing some interesting personality contrasts to emerge. Carol Schlink plays both a buoyant Austrian society matron and the sinister vampire mother of Carmilla. Suzanne Kaplan is the flirtatious Belgian "finishing governess" as well as the meek chambermaid Ilse. The cast is filled out by William Oakes, who mainly plays Moore's humorless English valet, and by Stan Olszewski, who seethes as the vampire-tracking General Rheinfeld. For the most part the acting is adequate. But at times I wished they'd been directed to stop mugging for effect and trust the occasional comical situation to be funny itself.

If you like, you can discuss such matters with the playwright and other panel members on Friday, November 14 at 8 p.m. at the theater. Refreshments will follow, but will not include Bloody Marys.

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