Sink your fangs into ‘Dracula’ at the Renton Civic Theatre

Published 11:00 am Thursday, October 23, 2025

Before I even knew that Renton Civic Theatre was showcasing a stage adaptation of “Dracula,” I had curated a hearty list of special vampire films to watch throughout the month of October — from Herzog’s 1979 remake “Nosferatu the Vampyre” to Coogler’s “Sinners” to Bigelow’s “Near Dark” to Robert Eggers’ own “Nosferatu” — and I must say it was a real pleasure to get to experience the show’s opening night on Oct. 17.

With coffins and wooden stakes on the mind and a special RCT Vampire’s Kiss cocktail in hand, I was excited to see director Brad Lo Walker’s take on local playwright Nathan Kessler-Jeffrey’s adaptation of the Stoker classic and to see which road he would take us down. Dracula, as a character, is such a tremendously formidable piece of literature and modern culture, influencing nearly everything we now know about vampires in popular media. With this version, we in the audience were treated to the real drama and real horror of the tale of Dracula.

As Walker points out in the director’s note of the program, the play is written in “an epistolary style,” which is similar to the original book, where much of the constructive narrative is told through diaries, letters and newspaper clippings, leading our characters straight to the supernatural horrors of Nosferatu himself.

I need to skip ahead a bit to the intermission, where patron voices were buzzing around me as the lights went up, with one person saying that they were expecting something more “campy” and silly and not for the play to be a serious adaptation. Their expectations weren’t solitary either; throughout the first act, there were plenty in the audience who had a very distracting hair trigger laugh during the early scenes, which I guess shows just how diluted the Dracula lore has become and how professional these actors were to not miss a beat, especially Michael Yichao as Jonathan Harker and Tadd Morgan as Count Dracula himself.

While there were moments of humor and levity (inevitable when Lucy Westenra, played exceptionally by Mariesa Genzale, is added to the mix), it was indeed a serious drama, heightened by the choice of music and the earnestness of the characters.

The story is one you may know: It’s 1897 and young English solicitor Jonathan Harker is sent to Transylvania to write up real estate documents for the mysterious Count Dracula, an ancient vampire who begins to feed on Jonathan in his sleep and confines him to the castle for weeks on end. Dracula makes his way to England, where he wreaks havoc, turning Lucy into a vampire before setting his sights on Jonathan’s fiancée Mina Murray (played keen and intelligent by Dani Davis).

Lucy’s fiancée Arthur Holmwood (Cameron Widmark) and her former suitor Dr. Seward (David Breyman) team up with Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Phillip Keiman), Jonathan and Mina to destroy the Count before it’s too late.

The talent of this cast is astronomical, with each actor bringing something unique and powerful to their characters: Widmark’s Holmwood is stout and endlessly devoted to Lucy and his friends, Breyman’s Seward is as scrupulous a scientist as he is a love-sick puppy (along with being the most natural with the physical acting and choreography) and Morgan’s take on Dracula pays homage to Lugosi while upping the severity of the Count and making the character his own. While the fluidity of the choreography still needs to be smoothed out when the characters physically interact with each other (something that will undoubtedly get better throughout the play’s run), this adaptation is still well worth the price of admission.

Especially when considering the overwhelming power of Angela Marith, who plays dual roles as Dracula’s steadfast servant Renfield and Sister Agatha, who nurses Jonathan back to health following his escape from Dracula’s castle. While Marith’s Agatha is gossipy and pious, her Renfield is a force of nature, allowing the actor to unleash her best cackle and display her impressive ability to tap into sheer madness.

Another major highlight of the show is the ambience, the mood, which is as necessary for a proper “Dracula” adaptation as glued on fangs and a Romanian accent.

Jacob Viramontes’ work as the lighting designer in “Dracula” is as much a key player as any of the actors on the stage — from a well-placed spotlight when characters read out their letters and diary entries to the brilliantly timed transitional lights throughout the dialogue to the blood-soaked red illumination during Lucy’s showdown with Van Helsing and Company, the dark and Gothic feel of the original novel is brought to life in an exquisite way.

In short, go see “Dracula,” which runs until Sunday, Nov. 2.

For tickets, visit rentoncivictheatre.org. Located at 507 South 3rd Street, the last show of the 2025 RCT season “Annie” from Dec. 5 to Dec. 21.