Communist Dracula Wins Pageant

Separating fact from fiction can be a difficult balancing act, but playwright Anne Washburn has impressively smudged that division, leaving an image of the fantastical nature of evil in its wake. Based on the trial of former Romanian dictators Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu and held together by a thick mixture of absurdity and Eastern European accents, the American Repertory Theatre’s world premiere of “The Communist Dracula Pageant” creates an image of madness that is both entertainingly and shockingly outlandish.

The players will perform this unbelievable truth through Nov. 9. The audience is told near the beginning that “with the exception of rumor, everything here is fact. Apart from all the very colorful bits, it is imagination; this is how we create a history.”

Performed on a relatively sparse stage at the Zero Arrow Theatre, the show frequently transitions from the Ceausescu’s “kangaroo court” trial to their delusions. The shifts are complemented by scenes of paranoid soldiers, riots, and camera crews capturing the play’s most violent moments. The tone is surprisingly light considering the crimes that the dictators are being charged with: genocide and the destruction of the nation’s economy. Yet this helps to emphasize the disconnect between the realities of Nicolae (Thomas Derrah) and Elena (Karen MacDonald) and those of their people. Elena believes that she is a world-renowned scientist, although she only attended school through the fourth grade. Nicolae spends enormous amounts of the country’s budget on tributes to himself. Vlad Tepes (performed on Friday night by understudy Josh Stamell), the historical Dracula, makes frequent appearances during a pageant held in his honor. As he serves as a consultant for Nicolae, a parallel is drawn between his viciousness and that of the Ceausescus.

The actors’ ridiculous exaggeration is perfectly aligned with the over-the-top feel of the entire play. Monologues by Vlad and Elena are humorously long. Descriptions are extended to fantastic lengths. The intentional theatrics beg for a clever use of lighting and set, which the A.R.T. and director Anne Kauffman readily provide.

Asides, fantasies, and chaos are depicted satisfyingly by skillful adjustments of the stage. During monologues, the lights dim save for a single spotlight on the speaker. Projected words on a white banner at the back of the stage present the date or the location, or the depiction of imaginary events, allowing the three large square backdrops to be moved around and create the rest of the spectacle.

There are a number of scenes that feature nearly a dozen people on-stage at a time, requiring complicated choreography for the characters dancing or singing or wreaking havoc. When Nicolae and Elena are chased by revolutionary forces, soldiers hoist the various backdrops, spinning them around the stage as the two characters run frantically to escape. The result is a well-created sense of chaos, a bit clunky in its execution, but astounding in its conception.

The overlying nonsensical nature does not, however, detract from the serious condition. Instead, there is something like truth that resonates even amidst the obvious exaggeration: this was Romania in the 1980s, and it was crazy. When Elena and Nicolae are captured, the lights on-stage darken, revealing only the projected letters, “THEIR REAL WORDS.” Meanwhile, you can here them struggling to get away, and Elena cries, “Is the death penalty still enforced in Romania?” Suddenly, the reality of the situation is solidified.

Even before the play begins, the playbill—not to mention history—reveals that the Ceausescus will be executed, but it is difficult to resist feeling some sympathy for them. It’s hard to imagine a pair of people more delusional, more disassociated from the reality of their people and the difference between their intentions and the real effects of their actions. After she has been executed, Elena appears on stage, wearing the white lab coat in which she entered the show. Her face and body are riddled with bullet wounds, her heel is broken, her hair disheveled. But she does not express remorse for anything she has done; she expresses anger and grief at her perceived mistreatment and the lack of appreciation that her “children,” the people of Romania, have shown for her.

“I was a stern mother...I starved your present to ensure your future,” she laments. “Because a good mother, a great mother, must see into your future.”

Vlad, during his earliest monologue, angrily criticizes freedom as a “food that only makes you hungrier.” But “The Communist Dracula Pageant,” with its hallucinations, phosphorescence and bears, reveals that the limited satiation of the free is better than the ludicrous pangs of the oppressed.

—Staff writer Beryl C.D. Lipton can be reached at blipton@fas.harvard.edu.