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[0:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So, when I first heard about this show back in 2002, do you know what I did, Jake Saenz?

[0:09] Jake Saenz: What did you do?

[0:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I went to eBay.

[0:11] Jake Saenz: Yes, eBay. I love that.

[0:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I went to eBay, and I would type in Dance of the Vampires consistently a couple times a week.

[0:23] Jake Saenz: Waiting for it.

[0:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I finally found a two-disc audio recording bootleg of Dance of the Vampires.

[0:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I spent $75 for a double-disc audio recording of Dance of the Vampires.

[0:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And it was a treasure, and I would show it to people, and I'd listen to it all the time. So, I knew this show before watching it for free on YouTube.

[0:51] Jake Saenz: And now that I talk about it, it smacked my head.

[0:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I mean, to be honest, so did I. Maybe when I was 13 or 14, right after it had come out, I actually did hear about Dance of the Vampires. And I remember looking, because I was so desperate for horror musical content, because I'm a little musical theatre boy who's obsessed with horror movies.

[1:12] Jake Saenz: The two halves of you wanted to feel whole.

[1:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes, absolutely. I wanted these worlds to collide very successfully, so I was like, oh my god, a musical about vampires? Which I was obsessed with. I was like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer obsessive. I was like, oh my god, vampires? Musical? This has to be great. I just assumed, right?

[1:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I remember looking it up on whatever music platform was even around back then, maybe like Rhapsody or, I don't know, something like that.

[1:41] Jake Saenz: Probably Limewire, to be honest.

[1:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And yeah, I know, pirate art.

[1:46] Jake Saenz: And at least I paid for my illegal version.

[1:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, that's fair, that's fair. You paid for your bootleg version of Dance of the Vampires.

[1:58] Jake Saenz: Who knows who I was supporting with that.

[1:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right, but I remember finding the song Carpe Noctem on there. It was one of the only ones that was available, that and the Total Eclipse of the Heart duet. And I remember listening to them a lot. I loved that Carpe Noctem. I was like, oh my god, this guy is singing so crazy high.

[2:17] Jake Saenz: Face off.

[2:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, so I was like, this rock and roll... I was like, this is so cool. This has to be the best thing ever. And then I never heard much about it after, because obviously it didn't last long. Nobody was producing it for youth theater or regional theater or whatever I was into at the time. And so it sort of just died. So when you brought this up as a possibility to do, it brought back a flood of memories of me being obsessed with me listening to Carpe Noctem, thinking that I was going to be playing a squirrelty vampire one day in my life.

[2:54] Jake Saenz: It could still happen.

[2:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It could still happen. It could still happen.

[3:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome everybody to a musical theater podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today we are talking about the musical Dance of the Vampires, which won our Vampire musical poll on Patreon! Last month, we also had listener Julia from Deutschland write in and tell us how much she enjoyed seeing Tanz der Vampire, the original German version of the show. Earlier this year, she wrote, quote, Tanz der Vampire absolutely blew me away. Last time I saw it, I was about 12 years old, so I didn't remember much of it, but I do know the cast recording inside and out. Still, seeing it live was such a different experience.

The staging and the power of the choir, as well as the dancing, are really something else. If you should ever go to Germany, you have to make sure to see it. Thank you for writing in, Julia. Now, as promised on Patreon! Our guest today to discuss this musical is a talented performer and podcast host whose own successful podcast, Fear the Talking Queers, breaks down all things horror films. I can literally think of no one more fluent in both horror and musical theater than Mr. Jake Saenz.

[4:32] Jake Saenz: Hello, hello, everybody. Hello, and thank you for that contribution from our friend from Germany. That's amazing.

[4:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, an incredible thing that somebody would reach out and have such an amazing positive review.

[4:43] Jake Saenz: Absolutely, absolutely. I am like low-key obsessed with European versions of musical theater, or just European musical theater in general, because, well, number one, wow, this is already off to a really strange tangent, but hearing people belt in other languages where placement is just naturally different is really fascinating to me.

[5:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, it is so strange. Just how our mouths work are so different.

[5:07] Jake Saenz: I can't help but feel like an Elphaba singing in German is going to be much harder than an Elphaba singing in English, because all of the vowels and all the placement is so much further back than like our meh sort of stuff out here. Anyway, one time I did watch this Elphaba video of this girl, I think, from Germany, and I used to think it was hilarious, because she's singing The Wizard and I, she's like killing it, she hits the whatever, and then I don't know if it was a preview or if there were just a dress rehearsal, but she hits it and there's like no applause, and then she just sort of silently walks off stage, and I thought it was so funny. I was like, wow, German audiences are really, really critical.

[5:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's a tough crowd. Maybe it was just the audio like plugged, I don't know.

[5:52] Jake Saenz: Yeah, it must have been, because I was like, oh, she deserved much bigger applause than silence. By the way, shout out Willemijn, isn't her name Willemijn Verkaeck?

[6:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, probably, probably. Incredible, incredible singer. So anyway, love our German brothers and sisters in the musical theater, and thank you, Julia, for reaching out. So, Jake, you and I talked extensively about vampire musicals for Patreon, and I'm really excited that this was the one that won the poll. I'm unapologetic about it. It's the most entertaining of the three that we discussed.

[6:30] Jake Saenz: Sure, absolutely. That is probably the truth. I was kind of nervous, because of the three, it was the hardest for me to pull from the source material, at least with Dracula. We're talking Dance of the Vampires, Dracula, Lestat. Yes, I have a good knowledge, a good amount of knowledge of Dracula, of the Anne Rice series of Interview with the Vampire, of Lestat. I was like, oh yeah, I was like, okay, I was like, one of those will win. I was like, it's name recognition. Nope, not the case, not the case. So Dance of the Vampires came along, and I was like, okay, I'm excited to talk about it, because it is quite the entertaining spectacle.

[7:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: For sure, for sure. Maybe not entertaining for all the right reasons, but definitely entertaining.

[7:14] Jake Saenz: Well, and here's the thing, is that this show is, I just shouted, dedicated to the cultural and emotional impact of musical theater, right? And I love, oh man, boy oh boy, do I love a flop with a huge cultural footprint.

[7:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, and this is quite the flop.

[7:36] Jake Saenz: Yeah, there are so many shows, and honestly, so many things that I've seen that I forget about the next week after I've seen it. But I feel so blessed, hashtag blessed, and lucky to have witnessed a catastrophe that I will remember my entire life. And there were a lot of people who, well, not a lot of people, but there were a few people who reached out on social media, like, I can't believe you're covering this show. I will never get those three hours of my life back. And I'm like, are you kidding me? You should be thanking your lucky stars you got to witness this thing. That's how I feel. I mean, it is definitely something I will never forget.

[8:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They got $12 million to do this thing. Let's go ahead and take it in.

[8:27] Jake Saenz: Yeah, and then lost it all in the end, because it was such a mess.

[8:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, well, I mean, it was a big old flop. But my point being, this show has a big cultural footprint. It will never be forgotten. And also had quite a few, I believe, as my hot take, had some kind of reverberations. There were a lot of precedents sent with this show that I think Broadway had to work really hard to overcome thereafter. So anyway, it's going to be really fun. Before we go in that, though, I have two questions for you.

[9:00] Jake Saenz: Sure.

[9:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Number one, why do we as a culture care about vampires?

[9:05] Jake Saenz: I mean, we've been telling these stories, like since ancient Greece. I think that there is something about the idea of, you know, living forever that is so ingrained in our mind as a human, skipping the death process, and you know, and seeing the world continue forever and ever, staying young, staying youthful. There's all these things that have been ingrained into our psyche.

[9:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The paradox of not wanting to die, but also not wanting to be attacked by a creature that will then make you live forever. That's complex.

[9:42] Jake Saenz: A lot of it's about losing your soul. That's sort of an intriguing thing for people in the vampire genre.

[9:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, and then there's all the sexy time stuff, too.

[9:53] Jake Saenz: Oh, of course. And then, of course, it's the sexuality of it. It's the, you know, homoeroticism of it.

[9:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The carnal desires.

[9:59] Jake Saenz: Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's like this urge within you that you can't ignore.

[10:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly. It's the bloodlust. Yeah. It's this insatiable appetite that you have for something dark and sexy that's definitely brought readers back to vampire books and, you know, having people watch vampire movies that are so sexually charged. People love to consume that. But on a darker note, I think it helps us deal with the idea of death. I think that, in a way, it convinces people that, you know what, living forever isn't an ideal situation.

[10:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The other thing I wanted to ask you about was horror and comedy, which I'm a huge fan.

[10:45] Jake Saenz: Oh, I love a horror comedy. I love it.

[10:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. I remember a professor from college days saying, always in acting class, that laughing and crying are kissing cousins. If you want to get to one, sometimes it's easy to go about it through the other.

[11:04] Jake Saenz: Yeah, absolutely.

[11:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Does that make sense?

[11:05] Jake Saenz: Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, like dealing with something emotional but with humor or something.

[11:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, or even if you're doing a scene and it's very emotional and it involves crying, it's okay to laugh a little bit because those two feelings are very close to each other. And I feel the same way about horror and about being scared, right? I mean, we get into a movie theater and we scream and then we laugh at ourselves for screaming. So, it makes sense to me that in the same way horror and comedy are kissing cousins. And yet, it feels like something that has only just been really, really popularized post-Hocus Pocus. What do you think?

[11:54] Jake Saenz: Yeah, like the horror comedy genre. I mean, I would probably say that it's had more of a life in maybe post-2000s, I would say. But there were occasionally horror comedies here and there. Dark comedies. We would have called them dark comedies before.

[12:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Sure, dark comedies, yeah. But yeah, I can definitely say we're saying post-Hocus Pocus, people all of a sudden had a desire to laugh and have a little bit of a spooky thing. And I think what you were saying earlier about them being kissing cousins is really interesting because both of those genres elicit a physical reaction out of people. Laughing is such a physical thing that we do, like an instinct that we have when something's funny. And then we have the physical reaction we get when being scared.

[12:45] Jake Saenz: Yeah, so I definitely see how those things kind of relate to each other and how putting them together can really create something magical, a horror comedy.

[12:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I know one of your favorite films of all time, Scream, I would say is definitely in that, right?

[12:57] Jake Saenz: My absolute favorite film of all time, yes. Oh yeah, absolutely. Comedy,

[13:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Horror, you know, being self-aware, you know, that sort of meta humor.

[13:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which means I feel like DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES would be right up your alley, because especially the source material, the 1967 film by Roman Polanski called THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, it's kind of an early pioneer in that genre.

[13:23] Jake Saenz: Absolutely, yeah. A horror comedy in 1967, like a very rare sort of gem of the time.

[13:30] Jake Saenz: This is a film that is very much hearkening back to old school Hollywood, kind of an Abbott and Costello meets Frankenstein type situation, but it's in the 60s, so there's more sexuality.

[13:44] Jake Saenz: And honestly, it's a little, it's scarier. So in prep for this episode, I watched that original film. I watched the German version of the film, the German musical version of the film, and then the Broadway version of the German version musical of the film.

[14:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What a web, what a web they have thrown.

[14:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Now, did you, I just want to know, did you watch the movie?

[14:12] Jake Saenz: I've seen it a while ago. I refreshed with, you know, some clips and stuff on YouTube.

[14:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: With some clips, okay.

[14:18] Jake Saenz: Yes, yes, yes.

[14:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And how do you feel about Roman Polanski?

[14:21] Jake Saenz: I mean, obviously a very controversial human.

[14:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. And I bring this up because it is going to come up later in the story of how Dance of the Vampires came to New York. But just so if anybody doesn't know out there, if we don't have any cinephiles in our musical theater mist, Roman Polanski, Academy Award winning director, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Pianists. He was infamously married to Sharon Tate, who was murdered by like the Charles Manson cult. A crazy, crazy life that only got crazier when he was convicted of child rape, like sleeping with a young teenager.

[15:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He was found guilty. He served a bit of prison time while they were figuring out what to do with him. He gets released from that facility. And during that release, he gets on a plane and goes to Europe and never comes back. And that is kind of where he remains, is if he ever steps foot back in America, he will be taken to prison. Now, I don't know why, but I still watch his films. I have no rhyme or reason for why I'm okay with watching his films, but not Woody Allen's or listening to Michael Jackson music. I don't know. I don't have a clear line. But for some reason, I still watch his movies.

[15:41] Jake Saenz: Yeah. And I think his movies, they have their own specific stamp on them. I mean, Rosemary's Baby, I mean, my goodness, it's so well done. And the slow burn of it all is just so, so well done. It's hard to sort of separate sometimes artists from their work. And yeah, Polanski is just one of those people that you have to sort of decide whether you want to stay on board or if you want to separate yourself. But at the end of the day, he contributed some really amazing art to the film world.

[16:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, 100%. And this movie that we're talking about, it first had the title Dance of the Vampires, but now it's The Fearless Vampire Killers. He is actually one of the main actors in the movie. The movie focuses on Professor Alonsius and his assistant Alfred, played by Roman Polanski. And they are traveling to this small town in Transylvania. They literally almost freeze to death on the way there. That's how remote it is. That's how treacherous it is to get to this very isolated place with the intention to find a real vampire.

[16:59] Jake Saenz: The humor about this movie is not that they are fearless vampire killers, it's that they're academics put into this-

[17:06] Jake Saenz: Who have never seen a vampire.

[17:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, who are now testing out all of their theories about what a vampire is and are in this little town that obviously has a lot of vampiric history. And it plays a lot like a silent movie. They're constantly bumbling and getting hurt in pratfalls, and this Professor Alonsius just has the skinniest little legs and is kind of gangly running around the whole time.

[17:35] Jake Saenz: But it's a pretty enjoyable watch.

[17:38] Jake Saenz: It's definitely entertaining, for sure. It has a good balance. There are some scenes like the abduction of Sharon Tate's character in it. It's actually kind of scary. It's done pretty well and balances that mix of comedy and horror pretty brilliantly, I would say.

[18:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So now let's get to the 1990s and composer Jim Steinman.

[18:04] Jake Saenz: Now, for those who don't know Mr. Steinman, he basically is a pop music writer who might be a vampire.

[18:14] Jake Saenz: I mean, the amount of gothic pop that this man was producing at that time that people don't even realize was is insane. I mean, you just listen to that Celine record and wow.

[18:28] Jake Saenz: It's all coming back to me now. I mean, truly, there are few songwriters that have as iconic stamps and distinct sounds as this dude, right?

[18:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And people don't even know. People don't even realize.

[18:42] Jake Saenz: Yeah. He wrote Totally Clips of the Heart. He wrote Meat Loaf's Bat Outta Hell album, basically. It's all coming back to me now.

[18:49] Jake Saenz: I Would Do Anything for Love, but I Won't Do That. Yeah, it's all coming back to me now. All these very epic, just dramatic songs.

[18:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Melodramatic and yet earnest and sincere.

[19:05] Jake Saenz: And that's why I think we all love them so much.

[19:08] Jake Saenz: If you are going to be singing a Jim Steinman song, then you better go full Celine Dion running through a marble corridor with fabric blowing in the wind machine, you know?

[19:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Have you ever seen the Totally Clips of the Heart music video?

[19:22] Jake Saenz: Oh, yes. Speaking of homoerotic, right?

[19:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, homoerotic. It is nonsensical. It is melodramatic and it is just everything.

[19:31] Jake Saenz: And you're just watching Miss Bonnie Tyler with this big head of feathered hair.

[19:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: All that hairspray.

[19:40] Jake Saenz: Just eyeliner, just drawn on with a Sharpie. It is just so 80s. It is so over the top.

[19:49] Jake Saenz: It is gaudy. It is everything.

[19:53] Jake Saenz: And even if you're in a Ford Explorer driving down the freeway, don't tell me you're not going to live your life to Totally Clips of the Heart at least once. Maybe the Nikki French version.

[20:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I should be paid by my audience on the 405 freeway for the kind of performance I'm giving to It's All Coming Back to Me Now. Hands sliding down the window.

[20:12] Jake Saenz: Yes. You turn off the defrost so that it gets a little foggy.

[20:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. Exactly.

[20:23] Jake Saenz: You can Titanic your hand down the side.

[20:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly. To the stars.

[20:28] Jake Saenz: Yeah. So we're talking drama. And this dude, Jim Steinman, also was not a stranger to musical theater. He, at this point, had also written the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind. Do you remember Whistle Down the Wind? There was a time there in the 90s when it was announced for Broadway every year and then every year it didn't happen. But he wrote the lyrics for that.

[20:50] Jake Saenz: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He was like, okay, I like to do theater too. Yeah, it makes sense.

[20:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. So he decides to turn the Fearless Vampire Killers into a musical, and it becomes Tanz der Vampire. It opens in Austria, and it's directed by the director of the film, Roman Polanski. So it's a huge hit. Like I said, I've watched the German production of this musical, and it is pretty much scene for scene the movie.

[21:17] Jake Saenz: Yeah. I didn't watch all of it, but I did.

[21:25] Jake Saenz: It is a very, very true adaptation.

[21:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: After I watched the Broadway one, I was like, okay, I have to watch the Austrian-German version of this. And so I watched it on Fast Forward. But yeah, compared to the movie, it is scene for scene, very tonally similar to the movie, for sure.

[21:47] Jake Saenz: And I would also say, more German... I'm like, what a hot take, Jeff.

[21:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: More German.

[21:55] Jake Saenz: More German. No. More German opera than American musical theater.

[22:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, it's pretty much all sung through.

[22:01] Jake Saenz: Watching it, it's sung through. It feels very much like lights up, and now we're in a village and doing this thing, and lights down, and now lights up, and we're in a castle and we're doing this sort of... It's like revealing these different songs without much of a script, like kind of tying them all together in the way that we've come to know musical theater in this country.

[22:28] Jake Saenz: Our cultural differences between us in America and Germany, and what the things that we expect to see on stage must be so completely different. There are things that I feel like would not translate well here, and things that are here that obviously wouldn't translate well there. And that's so fascinating to see.

[22:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Great example, two of the biggest musical theater hits in Germany, Starlight Express and Rocky the Musical.

[22:51] Jake Saenz: Whoa, that is so insane.

[22:55] Jake Saenz: And then add Dance of the Vampires to that, you know?

[22:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Sure, those are like embarrassments when you think of musicals here in America.

[23:03] Jake Saenz: But I mean, I guess it's just who we are as people and our different cultures, what we desire to see is just different.

[23:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, and I love it. I love it. I want to go see a show in Germany where the audience is losing its mind over a show that Americans would stick their nose up to. You know what I mean?

[23:21] Jake Saenz: Yeah, exactly.

[23:22] Jake Saenz: I'd be like, more power to you guys. Enjoy this stuff.

[23:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, more Starlight Express.

[23:28] Jake Saenz: Yes, please.

[23:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, so let's go through the story of the film, just so everybody kind of understands what's happening. Like I said, we got Professor Alonsius and his assistant, Alfred. They come into this village. The village immediately has warning signs that there are vampires everywhere, because everywhere you look, garlic.

[23:55] Jake Saenz: Garlic, yeah.

[23:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Hung everywhere. They go to this inn. They meet the innkeeper named Chagall, who has a wife, and he and the wife hate each other. He's constantly trying to cheat on her with the maid known as Magda, which doesn't bode well for Polanski because it's a little rapey.

[24:17] Jake Saenz: And the innkeeper and his wife have a daughter named Sarah, played by Sharon Tate. Sarah loves to take baths.

[24:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay.

[24:27] Jake Saenz: And that's kind of all we know about her.

[24:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I am on board with Sarah.

[24:34] Jake Saenz: She has this sponge that she really loves. And truly, that's all of the character development.

[24:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's it.

[24:42] Jake Saenz: Then there's this count, this vampire count named Count Krolok, who has decided that he wants Sarah. And he takes Sarah, but not before Alfred has fallen madly in love with her.

[24:59] Jake Saenz: So now, in addition to investigating vampires, Professor Alonsius and Alfred are looking to rescue Sarah from this count before she gets turned into a vampire.

[25:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: There are lots of hijinks in order for that to happen.

[25:17] Jake Saenz: They meet the count's son, who is a gay vampire, and he is obsessed with biting Alfred.

[25:30] Jake Saenz: The movie ends with them rescuing Sarah, but they don't realize that she has already been turned, and she in turn bites him, bites Alfred, as they're leaving this town.

[25:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Leaving us all to think that this horror, this terror has now been unleashed to the rest of the world because the sleigh carrying these two people is now carrying two vampires.

[25:58] Jake Saenz: Right. Yes. Very bookend from the beginning.

[26:01] Jake Saenz: The opening shot is very much, you know, it's them on...

[26:04] Jake Saenz: On the little sleigh, and then the ending. Yeah, snowy, snowy, snowy. And the end is just the same just now, with a new evil brought to the world. Yeah. That's the story of the first version of the musical. And what's interesting about the movie and the musical is they were made in Europe and then brought to America, and they both suffered from similar fates, which is producers thought there's no way that an American audience is going to understand this tone. So we need to go more drastically in the direction of comedy in order for it to play. In the case of the movie, they took the movie away from Polanski, cut about 14 minutes of it, plus added this like animated cartoon, kind of like the parent trap, like the old parent trap, where there's like a vampire chasing these two, chasing like the animated versions of Professor Alonzius and Alfred, with the idea that this is a comedy, right?

Yeah. And so the same thing happened to DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES the musical. Producers are like, we need to add some more comedy. Here's where the Polanski thing comes into play. It is announced that DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES is coming to New York, and that it is going to be directed by Roman Polanski. And everyone's like, how is that going to happen? If he comes to America, he goes to prison. Obviously, Polanski backs out, and he's no longer directing. He's like, I cannot come over here. Yeah, yeah. Jim Steinman steps up and tells the producers, don't worry. He didn't really even direct the Austrian version anyway. It was kind of all of me. I'll be the director. And producers are like, no, you're not.

This isn't going to happen. So then they end up having to find an entirely new producing team, and they bring on a whole new creative team, which are Jim Steinman, still as composer. He's doing an English translation of his lyrics. The book that was originally written by the something-Kunze. Michael Kunze is now being rewritten by David Ives, who's a playwright. He had done All in the Timing, the comedy All in the Timing. It is to be directed by John Rando and choreographed by John Carafa, both of whom had just had a huge success with You're in Town.

[28:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: How do you feel about You're in Town?

[28:36] Jake Saenz: I like You're in Town. I think it's great. I think it's a very smart satire, and very fun. A little uncomfortable, but also really fun and really funny.

[28:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which you're like, okay, that's exactly who should be doing this show. Right. Sure. Absolutely. Somebody who understands how to make comedy out of peeing.

[28:57] Jake Saenz: Absolutely.

[28:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Is someone who could possibly make a musical about vampires finally work, right?

[29:03] Jake Saenz: Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing about You're in Town, though, is that the reason I think that the satire and the self-awareness of You're in Town works is because of that score. The score sounds like Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Three-Penny Opera, which is also German, go figure.

[29:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: There we go. But those scores, that team historically has been known to be self-aware, to not have this fourth wall, to be talking directly to the audience, to be showing the bare bones of theater, to be deconstructed. Jim Steinman, as we said, his score is melodramatic and takes itself completely serious.

[29:48] Jake Saenz: Oh, yes. Very seriously.

[29:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So to put that up against this super spoofy comedy feels like two different shows. It is tonally so inconsistent. It's pretty jarring sometimes. Suffice it to say, Dance of the Vampires opens toward the end of 2002. Jim Steinman stopped, I mean, when they were rehearsing on Broadway, he stopped going to rehearsals because things were changing so much. He's like, this sucks. They were getting so far away from what he had ever intended the show to be. He stopped showing up and didn't go to opening night. To me, that says that this version of the show will never see the light of day again. If only because Jim Steinman hated it and doesn't want it to be seen again.

[30:43] Jake Saenz: Right, of course. Okay, I have a question for you. Let's acknowledge the vampire in the room. How much of this do you contribute to Michael Crawford?

[30:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, so that's one of the big things that I wasn't sure how to bring it up.

[30:58] Jake Saenz: Right, of course. Somebody had to do it. Yeah, I think considering how worried producers were about it even being accepted by American audiences to begin with, they decided they needed a star turn. They need to turn into a star vehicle. And so they somehow, and Jake, I don't know how this contractually ever went down. They got Michael Crawford, original Phantom of the Opera, to be the count. And apparently there were a lot of negotiations into making sure that it was worth it for him.

[31:37] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The costuming and the...

[31:39] Jake Saenz: Right, I mean, I get it because it's like Michael Crawford obviously is a bankable star because he starred in one of the most successful musicals of all time.

[31:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. Of course. But it seems like they didn't account for the fact that it seems like he was a little bit of an egomaniac on this project.

[32:01] Jake Saenz: Something that they did not foresee, for sure.

[32:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, and forgive the pun, also maybe a little long in the tooth.

[32:09] Jake Saenz: Okay, for a vampire who's supposed to be seductive and sexy. He was a little bit older. He was a little, rumors have it, that he was very controlling about his costumes and wanted all of this stuff to mask his neck.

[32:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: His neck and his cheek, his jowls.

[32:26] Jake Saenz: Yeah.

[32:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And the costume that he ends up having is hilarious. That Party City cape when he lifts his arms with the little bat wings on it. I was like, wow. I was like, after all that, this is what they came up with? After all of those negotiations, that's what we ended up with. Also, we get a little bit of a David Bowie in Labyrinth type situation in the front, if you know what I mean.

[32:50] Jake Saenz: All right, he said, I'm going to let the people know that I don't really have this. So Michael Crawford was nervous about this character being too much like the Phantom of the Opera.

[33:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Of course you were! The Phantom of the Opera is basically a vampire. This musical is about a girl who hears an angel of music in her brain that's calling her to a castle where she's going to join his lifestyle. It is the Phantom of the Opera, so his worries were completely justified. But what they kept on telling him over and over again is, what's going to set it apart is the comedy. You'll be able to show your comedic chops. They kept writing jokes for him. He got to, just like Hello Dolly, put on a really interesting voice and accent.

[33:40] Jake Saenz: Interesting, yeah, for sure.

[33:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's somewhere between a continental accent and an Italian. I was like, what is this accent? It is all over the place. I can't even do it.

[33:56] Jake Saenz: I was like, what in the Mario is happening here?

[33:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What in the Super Mario? What in the Super Mario is going on here, Mr. Crawford? Credit where credit's due, he still sounds really great.

[34:08] Jake Saenz: Oh, flawless.

[34:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I mean, the guy's got a voice. I don't know how his voice aged as well as it did, but Dude sounds exactly like he did in 1989. He sounds great. That is by far the least of his problems when it comes to his performance in this show. And they give him opportunities to really milk it. There's a moment in the show, Jake, where he holds out a note so long that I got out my phone, rewound it, and timed it. Guess how long he holds that note for?

[34:39] Jake Saenz: I will say 25 seconds.

[34:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Correct.

[34:42] Jake Saenz: No way!

[34:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay. Yeah, it was 24.

[34:45] Jake Saenz: Wow, that is insane. But that's also not the only time that happens in this show. Every single character has a moment where they hold a note so absurdly long that you're like, what? Why? Why is this happening? I understand the passion. I get it. I get it. We're emoting through music. But my god, does every single character have to scream at me for 30 seconds straight and I have to be like, yeah?

[35:13] Jake Saenz: Without a breath.

[35:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Without a breath. It's impressive. Now, everybody knows on a musical theater podcast that F-word is not a bad word, and by F-word, I mean flop.

[35:22] Jake Saenz: Yeah.

[35:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So let's go through it, shall we?

[35:25] Jake Saenz: Yeah, let's do it. All right. The show opens in a completely different way than the movie. It opens with Sarah, which I appreciate. We're trying to give Sarah more to do than take a bath, right?

[35:38] Jake Saenz: There we go. What it feels like to me, if we're talking character arc, is that this now becomes her story of sexual awakening, of feeling empowered to follow her dreams, whether they're sexy or not.

[35:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. It sounds very familiar, Christine.

[36:01] Jake Saenz: It's all sounding a little similar. Do you know what it also reminded me of? Have you been watching The Vow about the NXIVM cult?

[36:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, the documentary about the NXIVM?

[36:09] Jake Saenz: Yeah, yeah. That's kind of what it reminded me of, where she's like, I'm feeling empowered to finally discover who I am. And we're like, yeah, but only because you've been hypnotized by a vampire.

[36:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, this is very Alice in Mac, for sure.

[36:23] Jake Saenz: It's very Alice in Mac. Yeah, this is her story on stage. We've got Smallville written all over this thing.

[36:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes, absolutely. Oh, man, I hope that these deep cuts are tickling someone else's fancy.

[36:37] Jake Saenz: I know. Please, I hope somebody gets the humor, I hope.

[36:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. So we meet Sarah and her two friends, and they're in the forest. And right from the get-go, one of the lines is very open-eyed Sarah going, what could possibly happen in a dark forest in the middle of Transylvania three days from Halloween? And the audience is like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, right? And then they break out into a Transylvanian prayer to help them feel safe.

[37:07] Jake Saenz: Right. Which is a gorgeous piece of music.

[37:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right from the get-go. Fierce. I will say about this show, these performers are giving 110%. Maybe some of the best singers we've ever heard in a show, period.

[37:24] Jake Saenz: Yes, absolutely.

[37:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They sound flawless. Everybody.

[37:28] Jake Saenz: Everybody in the show sounds incredible.

[37:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And it's singing like their life depends on it. And I will never talk about Mandy Gonzalez enough, who's playing Sarah.

[37:41] Jake Saenz: My only experience with her was the In the Heights soundtrack.

[37:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, original Nina.

[37:47] Jake Saenz: Sure, of course. And so watching her in this, I was like, holy cow, this girl can blow. She is a beast.

[37:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Whoa, stamina.

[37:54] Jake Saenz: A beast of a vocalist.

[37:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Stamina is the word. And looks like she's in comfy house slippers.

[38:01] Jake Saenz: Literally, well, yeah, she kind of floats through the show in a hypnotic, you know, whatever. And it's just scrouting her face off like it's nothing.

[38:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And like it's nothing to her.

[38:15] Jake Saenz: Yeah, and gorgeous. I mean, stunning.

[38:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely beautiful. In that like early 2000s show makeup.

[38:21] Jake Saenz: Everybody's just like painted.

[38:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Pale.

[38:24] Jake Saenz: Painted. Pale and bright red hair. I love it. So right here at the top, we've got like these crazy jokes. Like one of the girls is eating mushrooms and she's kind of high. But then this like gorgeous, gorgeous music sung by some of the most incredible vocalists you'll ever hear. It's baffling.

[38:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, it's just like, OK, like especially in this beginning scene, like this should be setting us up for what to expect. And to be honest, it does, because a lot of slapsticky sort of humor going on and then beautiful music. And I think you can even tell on the bootleg, like the audience is like on board at first. They're laughing at the jokes. They're like, OK.

[39:06] Jake Saenz: I'm down for this. It's also later in the run, so they know what they're in. Sure. I'm sure. People probably read the reviews. They know what to expect. And so they probably went in fully knowing what was about to happen, thinking that they were going to go to Rocky Horror or something. Sure. But at the same time, it's more gorgeous than Rocky Horror has ever attempted to be. They're too punk rock for that. Yeah. We have yet to meet Professor Alonzius and Alfred, and we don't for another 20 minutes, because then we go to the town where they're from. Oh, first! Oh my gosh, I'm totally skipping. Out of this Transylvanian prairie comes the Jellicle Ball. Are they vampires? Are they wolves? Are they zombies?

Demons? The design of these vampires is very bizarre. They look like they've been in the crypt forever, but vampires should be coming out every night. Why do they look old and dusty and like ghosts, but werewolves, but zombies? And dancing. And dancing. These people are dancing. Now, if Mandy Gonzalez is at the top of her range, these dancers are at the edge of what is capable for human bodies to do. The dancing is so full out and so New York concert jazz. It's like, triple PK turn into a layout where your hair's touching the ground and your foot's in the air, and everybody's lines are just always 180 across the board. There's lifts, people's legs are in the air, they're flying across, they're tumbling, they're back-flipping and front-flipping, and it is absolutely chaos.

And we don't know why. And we're like, what is happening? What is this? Does this happen every night in the forest? Okay. But what it does lead to is this giant black coffin to rise out of the stage, and it opens to reveal Michael Crawford as the Count, and he says, God has left the building. BOOM. And everybody loses their minds. I mean, okay, yeah. For the beginning of the show, this seems very promising. Absolutely. I just got chills talking about it. This is a great elevator pitch right here. And the set is just next level. So expensive. This is like Vegas. The spectacle around this is definitely holding this stuff together. No, it's fine. We're talking about vampires. The other thing about the set is that it doesn't necessarily look expensive, but you know it's expensive. Yeah, for sure. You know what I mean?

[42:01] Jake Saenz: Yeah. So now Sarah and the Count are talking, and he's kind of both incepting in her mind and revealing that she's not really happy in this small town, and that she has much more possibility, and a freak inside that needs—she's got a she-wolf, is what she has. Yeah, she does. Yeah. And she's got to let it out so it can breathe. And so it kind of plants that little seed, as well as a refrain of Total Eclipse of the Heart, to let her know that she needs to come to this ball, this dance, at his castle on Halloween Eve. And skipping ahead, the reason—and once again, this is all invented for the new script—the reason behind that is because there is a legend that says a girl named Sarah, who's a virgin, is going to go to a ball in a blood-red gown and red boots, and dance with the vampires, and be bit by this Count, and then he's going to become her husband.

They're going to become vampire mates, and that is going to allow vampires to spread throughout the entire world, and not just be confined to Transylvania. So that's the whole conceit behind Sarah going to the castle. It's crazy. Sarah goes back to the inn, and when we get to the inn, we have the amazing production number, GARLIC! GARLIC! GARLIC! Wow, I never thought I'd ever see the day when I just watched a musical number where people say GARLIC over and over, and it is the most chaotic number I've ever seen on stage. First of all, there's like 500 people on stage. Why did we need 50 people in this cast? They're literally hanging out of the windows, there's legs just going crazy, and I'm overwhelmed. Do you know what this is? This is L'Chaim from Fiddler on the Roof on some sort of speed or crack cocaine.

[44:10] Jake Saenz: Yeah, this is L'Chaim and More Pies, whatever that song is called. More Pies? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, from Sweeney Todd, right? From Sweeney? Yeah, it's like people in a tavern. Yeah, it's like they're celebrating their GARLIC festival, yes. Yeah, which I'm like, okay, the GARLIC thing I get is a reference to the film, but it never really comes back to play at all in the rest of the plot of this film. There's no more—and by the way, it doesn't seem like it's doing anybody any good, is it? Any good? No. Everybody's getting bit left and right. Right, exactly. The GARLIC is obviously not helping anybody, but it's just weird that we have an entire production number dedicated to these people loving GARLIC and their GARLIC festival, and it literally has nothing to do with anything.

It's sort of just a waste of our time hearing them scream GARLIC at us for five minutes and dance. And once again, for some reason, the German production just feels like a German operetta where you go like, welcome to our community and where we talk about GARLIC. It doesn't get into the specifics. It's more just like, welcome to our culture. We love GARLIC. That's all you need to know. This number didn't need to be as big as they made it, because to me as a viewer, I think that there's going to be some sort of significance to it later on.

[45:30] Jake Saenz: Yeah, because why on earth would you have an eight-minute number if it wasn't going to pay off somewhere? Also, we got to mention that one of the lyrics is, GARLIC, GARLIC, that's why we're well hung. Yeah, I literally had to Google it. I was like, does GARLIC have anything to do with penis size? And everything was like, I mean, maybe. I think nothing was like, yes, according to, you know, this, this or this. Yeah, yeah, no correlation, guys. And I'm like, I was like, this is insane. I'm sure Italians may disagree with you on that one. Well, I mean, there we go. Maybe that's the proof is in the pudding right there.

[46:17] Jake Saenz: So now we've met all of these people. Finally, Professor Alonzius and Alfred show up. And they are, once again, academics. But now they are actually vampire hunters. They are there to rid the world of vampires. And they know that this is a particular hot spot. So they have shown up with all of their gadgets and gizmos aplenty. Professor Alonzius, played by an incredible actor, René Auberjonois. I believe I'm saying his name correctly. Very much a beloved musical theater, New York actor. He gets applause on his entrance. And he has like a modern major general number where he...

[47:02] Jake Saenz: Another one of these numbers where I'm like, why? Why did we? Why is there a pattern? Once again, it bodes for me that like, this was probably just supposed to be a German operetta. Right. Sure. Okay. So modern major general, operetta from Pirates of Penzance. But I guess I just think in the context of the show, right? Like we have this entire song about this character's love of logic. But when does logic ever come into place for his character later in the show? That's true. We do see that... I'm going to call him Count Cronut because I don't know how to say his name.

[48:01] Jake Saenz: Count Cronut. Yeah. So he shows him the library and it almost entices him to stay and to become a vampire. But other than that, we have this entire crazy patter song with five of our leads up there doing their best. And it's like, but why? We get who this character is. Obviously, it's a reference to that. But what is the point? There's so many numbers like that. And I'm like, maybe that's where the disconnect with Jim Steinman is. Maybe he was just adding numbers to add numbers. And they're not necessarily furthering the plot in any way. But I also think that maybe that's why adding the script didn't help this at all.

[49:20] Jake Saenz: Absolutely. Because for some reason, like I said, when it's lights on, number lights off, lights on, different number lights off, it feels less disjointed than trying to put a script through it that has a through line and weaving it all together. Because I don't know if it's weavable. No, it's not. P.S. Sarah has been bit the first time. And so she's like laying in bed. She hasn't like been drained of blood. So she's not a full vampire. She's just been bit. I guess I should have said that's like how he planted the seed of her wanting to return and go to the castle. And Professor Alonzi says like, she needs a blood transfusion now. So he uses Alfred, aka Max von Essen's blood to transfuse into hers. And now they've fallen in love because they like share each other's blood, which I think I actually kind of like that a lot.

[50:01] Jake Saenz: That's cute. That's a clever way to take that trope of love at first sight, but make it fresh and make it new. I did like that. I like that. Yeah. And like, what a great way to justify them all of a sudden singing the same song. Yeah, right. He's like singing. And then as she starts getting his blood, like she starts singing the same song. And now they're singing a duet. That's great. Clever. That moves it along a little bit. We learn, we get these characters, we're forming relations. It's not just a song to be a song. We're actually learning more about characters and getting the connections with each other, which I think is important.

[50:52] Jake Saenz: Thank you. The transfusion works and the desire to be a vampire has now kind of exited Sarah's mind until the count comes back in the form of an actual bat. And it's like a puppet bat with wings that are flying and Michael Crawford gets to do another voice. Question. Yeah. Is Michael Crawford playing that old lady? Also that character? What is this old lady character? I wasn't even going to bring it up because it's a non sequitur. But there is this random old woman that is 100% Michael Crawford.

[51:30] Jake Saenz: Oh, I knew it. Floating in and out. I was like, what is this? It has to be. Who else is? I even checked the playbill and they... Do they credit that character? They credit that character, but it's some made up name like Mary Sunshine. You know what I mean? That is ridiculous. It has to be. It's like this old crone type of character, like the witch from Into the Woods, like just like floating in and out of scenes and sort of dropping little wisdom or whatever she does. But I was like. By the way, she never comes back again. She never goes back. She never goes. She shows up twice and she contributes, again, literally nothing to what's happening. The costume is cute. It's like fierce, but like it's not. It doesn't contribute.

[52:03] Jake Saenz: So after the count visits Sarah again, now she's back to wanting to be a vampire. She leaves her father. The innkeeper goes to find her. That's when he gets bit. He gets brought back to the inn. And Professor Alonso says, hey, wife, you need to stake him in the heart to make sure that he doesn't come back as a vampire. And she and the wife is like, how dare you? I will not be putting a stake in my husband's heart. He's obviously dead. He's suffered enough. And he's like, please do it. So he leaves her alone with Magda, the one that the husband is always trying to sleep with, who, by the way, Leah Hawking, incredible. This is why she is my favorite character in this show. I would watch 100% of just the character. Just track Magda. Just track Magda. She could be like Elvira potential or something like she was so funny.

[52:08] Jake Saenz: She was this sexy, buxom blonde with this great voice.

[52:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Bulgarian blonde.

[52:13] Jake Saenz: I think it might have just been her performance, but she somehow managed to elevate the comedy to being funny.

[52:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, 100%. You know who that is? That's Miss Sandra from All Shook Up.

[52:22] Jake Saenz: No way!

[52:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[52:24] Jake Saenz: Okay, that makes sense. She's great. She's fantastic.

[52:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I have emailed her back and forth to try and get her on the show, and we've always just had scheduling, but now I am recommitted to getting Leah Hawking on the show, because if for no other reason, she is a breath of oxygen in Dance of the Vampires.

[52:40] Jake Saenz: Oh my gosh, yes. She's funny. She looks great. Her voice is insane.

[52:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: She has one of those, I think, long-ass notes that go on forever and ever and ever.

[52:51] Jake Saenz: But then it's actually funny because she stops in the middle of the note and goes like, uh.

[52:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes! She comments on it. There's an acknowledgement from her that this is crazy, while the rest of it is so earnest. It saved a little bit of this musical for me.

[53:09] Jake Saenz: Just her performance.

[53:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. No, she's great. So she and the wife are now like these strange bedfellows, because they both know how crazy the husband was when he was alive, and now they're both mourning his death, and they have this song called Death is Such a Naught Thing.

[53:27] Jake Saenz: Shout out to the wife, who's played by Liz McCartney. Someone else who I'd love to have on the show, because she, a few years later, was in Taboo. What an early 2000s Liz McCartney had, being in both Dance of the Vampires and Taboo. While they're singing, he comes back to life as a vampire. So they missed their opportunity to stake him, and now they've got him running around trying to either hump them or bite them. It's kind of up for interpretation.

[53:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Very Mel Brooks, you know, little sexy innuendo comedy.

[54:02] Jake Saenz: Sarah now wandering the woods with Albert by her side. They sing this song called Braver Than We Are, and I have dedicated a full 45 minutes to this next section, because...

[54:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's about how long the song is.

[54:18] Jake Saenz: And I will watch it three more times.

[54:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay.

[54:23] Jake Saenz: It's the song that we expect them to sing, where they want to be braver than they really are.

[54:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Of course.

[54:30] Jake Saenz: And it's cold, so she asks him to go get her scarf.

[54:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Of course. Go get my scarf. We're in a blizzard currently.

[54:40] Jake Saenz: You're right. We're in the middle of Transylvania, but you know what's going to really save this?

[54:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[54:44] Jake Saenz: A scarf. And in that moment, she also finds the blood red boots. I don't know how, but I can't exactly remember how, but it reignites her passion and her desire to go to the castle. And so she's putting on the boots and singing now kind of like a DJ Sammy version.

[55:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: A disco megamix, as if we're watching the end of Joseph.

[55:11] Jake Saenz: Of Braver Than We Are. And she's coming into her own power and visualizing what this dance is going to be like. And does it appear? It sure does, people. Her imagination comes to life behind her, and we go full Michael Bennett in ballroom. There's a mirror in the back and all of these dancers come on, dressed as either saloon girls or vampires, and they all start doing ballroom dancing.

[55:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And because the whole back is a mirror, it looks like there's 1800 of them while Mandy Gonzalez is singing at the top of her lungs. And it's all spectacle. It's all Vegas. They have these capes that are like sparkly red lamé, and the lighting is catching them. It is, like, taste questionable, but...

[56:05] Jake Saenz: I mean, I'm living at this point. I'm like, you know what? More of this. Why not? Thank you.

[56:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Let's lean in. The disco beat is going, and there's vampire girls flying in the air, doing aerials. I don't even know how they did this crazy haunted mansion magic, but there is a curtain that comes down, and it's like a two-way mirror type situation, where then the dancers in between the mirror in the back and the mirror in the front create an eternity of vampire dancers.

[56:37] Jake Saenz: It looks like a full ballroom. It's so cool. Like I said, I don't know how they did it, and we're still able to see it, but it's great.

[56:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, it's great. Like, what is actually happening?

[56:48] Jake Saenz: I don't know, but whatever I'm watching, great. Love it.

[56:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. And the most insane part about it is that there isn't even a button to the end. The audience doesn't even know when to applaud, because after all of that, it just melts into Alfred coming on and being like, your scarf, where did she go?

[57:10] Jake Saenz: And then we have One Day More. With like, I'm like, wait, I was like, wait, what is happening? I was like, how do we get here? How do all these villagers are singing this? All of a sudden, we're in this new song, the villagers singing One Day More, another great Jim Steinman melody, but no idea what's happening.

[57:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What is happening? Why are they singing this?

[57:31] Jake Saenz: The villagers don't ever really even do anything after this. It looks like they're about to, you know, kill the beast. Like, they ghost storm the castle. But nope, doesn't happen. So I'm like, why are we sitting here? Nope, we just needed to sing the song.

[57:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Literally, and they're singing it so, again, I keep using the word earnest. They sound incredible.

[57:48] Jake Saenz: They sound great, but it's so, this part is all of a sudden now taken very seriously, and they're like singing to the audience and, you know, and the color purple, like, it's just like, what is, like, why are we watching this? This is so bizarre.

[58:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Maybe to me, the craziest thing is that it's singing, singing louder, louder, singing, singing, singing, button, applause. We're like, this is the end of the first act, obviously.

[58:15] Jake Saenz: One day more.

[58:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And it's not.

[58:19] Jake Saenz: It's not. There's still this, like, random 45 second scene where all that happens is this huge, enormous, probably-could-kill-someone Spider-Man bridge comes, like, lowers down to reveal Michael Crawford, and Mandy Gonzalez, like, walks up, and so now she's at the castle, and then it's the end of the first act.

[58:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's mind-boggling. I'm sure that, I mean, I know I saw in the production notes, whatever, that it was like, that they had a lot of technical difficulties, which pushed back the opening date. I'm sure that thing had so much to do with it.

[59:01] Jake Saenz: Yeah, they had more previews than actual performances.

[59:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I'm sure that thing had a lot to do with it, but I do have a friend who I was talking to about this, and he was like, oh, I saw it, and he's like, in that specific moment, he said he still gets chills about thinking about it, he said, because in person, it was so impressive.

[59:16] Jake Saenz: Wow.

[59:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You know, over YouTube, it's probably not as impressive, but I mean, it's so incredible. It is, it's like this amazingly huge set piece. I mean, they're using the spectacle to really try to glue this thing together, to get people on board. If I can leave the theater remembering that incredible drawbridge, maybe the rest of it wasn't so bad.

[59:39] Jake Saenz: Maybe it wasn't so bad. Act two starts, and what do we start out with?

[59:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Totally Clips of the Heart, baby.

[59:47] Jake Saenz: Of course, and you can see the eruption of laughter on that bootleg.

[59:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, because poor Sarah is downstage center being like, hello, is anyone there? And then you hear disembodied voices go, turn around. And you're like, oh no, not this.

[1:00:04] Jake Saenz: And everybody laughs and breaks out into applause, and this becomes Crowlock and Sarah singing Totally Clips of the Heart together. But the song is very long, and they sing all of it, and there is not an ounce of interesting staging happening.

[1:00:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: At least in the Austrian one, he comes down that beautiful spiral staircase. There was clear direction going on. In this one, they literally just park and park, and they stand on the stage and sing this five-minute song, Totally Clips of the Heart, with completely different lyrics, which some of them are so funny, because it seems like they're cramming so many words.

[1:00:44] Jake Saenz: They're like, once upon a time, you were a vampire, and I loved you so much. I was like, why are they cramming so many words in here? Like, just let the song be.

[1:00:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like, I don't know. Maybe it's the German to English translation.

[1:00:59] Jake Saenz: But see, that's the other thing, is I'm so impressed that the Germans, and I mean this sincerely, they don't need to laugh at that. They're like, this is a great melody, and you're using it in this show, and we're not going to laugh at it. It's great.

[1:01:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, but us over here, we're like...

[1:01:17] Jake Saenz: We gotta be like, wonk, wonk, look, I'm wearing a clown nose. Now don't make fun of us, because we're making fun of ourselves.

[1:01:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I know. Apparently, like Jim Steinman said, putting this song to the show was an accident. It was like a placeholder or something, and then they loved it. But over here, it obviously didn't translate that well, because Total Eclipse of the Heart is such a staple of pop culture. Like, people know it.

[1:01:40] Jake Saenz: And so to hear it in this context, when none of the rest of the music, to our knowledge, is recognizable...

[1:01:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's true, because also people's appetites, if you will, were a little more accustomed to jukebox musicals.

[1:01:57] Jake Saenz: Yeah, jukebox musicals, sure.

[1:01:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Mamma Mia! They're used to being in on the joke of, we know this song, and now it's being used in this way.

[1:02:06] Jake Saenz: Of course.

[1:02:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: But this is the only time that it's ever done in the whole show.

[1:02:09] Jake Saenz: So once again, inconsistent.

[1:02:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, it's just inconsistent and inspired laughter from the audience, which I'm not surprised at.

[1:02:16] Jake Saenz: All right, let's go to Carpe Noctem.

[1:02:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right, right, right, right.

[1:02:24] Jake Saenz: Who is singing this? Is it just a random dude, or is it Herbert the Gay Son?

[1:02:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Uh, I mean, from what I...

[1:02:34] Jake Saenz: Like, the actor or the character?

[1:02:37] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Either or both.

[1:02:38] Jake Saenz: Oh, I don't know. That probably would have made more sense. But it literally, to me, looks like just ensemble member number five, who gets his moment.

[1:02:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Who has maybe the most incredible voice I've ever heard in my life.

[1:02:51] Jake Saenz: Yeah, range, I'm telling you. When I was 14, finding that track on Limewire, I was like, oh my god, this guy is singing. That was, like, inspirational to me, how incredible his range was.

[1:03:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The singing is basically a nightmare.

[1:03:08] Jake Saenz: Oh, by the way, Professor Alonzius and Albert...

[1:03:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Alfred?

[1:03:13] Jake Saenz: Now I'm...

[1:03:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Alfred.

[1:03:15] Jake Saenz: Oh my gosh. We've completely...

[1:03:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Now I've gone to Bye Bye Birdie.

[1:03:19] Jake Saenz: Yeah, Cronin, yeah, I'm telling you. Alfred, they're now at the castle. The Count invites them in, puts them in a room, and is like, have a great night's sleep. It's a big, beautiful bed with a duvet that's like a sparkly black piece of fabric. And they go to bed, and Alfred has this crazy nightmare.

[1:03:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's when this song comes.

[1:03:41] Jake Saenz: And...

[1:03:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Again, a huge dance number, humongous.

[1:03:46] Jake Saenz: It's a dream ballet, all of a sudden. We have dream Sarah and dream Albert.

[1:03:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Alfred.

[1:03:53] Jake Saenz: Shoot. And we even have dream Count Crologue.

[1:04:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Is that... yeah.

[1:04:01] Jake Saenz: I mean, I think that's what was happening. It's so hard to tell what is... There's so much chaos going on. It's hard for me to follow the story of the ballet or...

[1:04:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Just the most flexible dancers I've ever seen in my life.

[1:04:13] Jake Saenz: Okay, but I do remember that part.

[1:04:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[1:04:16] Jake Saenz: Alfred wakes up from the dream. Thank goodness it was just a dream. I haven't been turned into a vampire. Literally not necessary, but they needed something else for the second act. And then we meet the Count's son, his gay son, who all of a sudden really wants to bite Alfred.

[1:04:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They have this funny duet. This is one of the funnier moments, funnier bits in the movie. And there's also... I think the second act of the German version actually is where most of the comedy is. Is because of all of this sort of thing. And I watched this entire scene in the German version. And it's actually done pretty well. It's funny. It's not as on the nose as the American version is. It actually is pretty funny.

[1:05:10] Jake Saenz: The Vampires are called from the crypt, another huge set piece, which is just insane and they all crawl out of their coffins to attend this ball. Mandy Gonzalez, a.k.a. Sarah, shows up in her blood red dress and kind of presents her neck in a very ceremonious way so that he can bite her and become the wife and everybody can spread across the world. He bites her, but before he can fully drain her, Albert and Professor Alonzi come in and grab her. The professor breaks the window, which is now letting in the light, and Michael Crawford has this Billy Bigelow soliloquy of how tough it is to be a vampire. Oh my god, I was like, please let this song end. That number was so ridiculous, especially because of how he's been portraying the character.

We haven't really talked too much about it, but he obviously tried to insert a lot of humor. He was very cheeky and horny and tongue-in-cheek, and then has this dramatic five-minute number about how tortured he is. And you're like, nobody cares. Nobody cares, and the lyrics are not... There's a melody, but the lyrics don't have any sort of repetition that we can cling onto. It's just words after words after words. I looked up the lyrics after because I wanted to be like, what was this song even about? I listened to the whole thing and had no idea what he was saying. And the lyrics say something like, a lot of people believe in gods, Jesus, Muhammad, whatever. I only have one god, and that god is the god of appetite.

That could have been said in a much more concise way. But also, why is that the message at this moment when he's dying, or when he's being... I don't know. It's just... Who knows? Oh, I think I'm conflating two scenes. Forgive me, but in any case... That soliloquy happened before this entire fight.

[1:07:30] Jeff Parsons: Before he died. It's true, it's true. But what does that have to do with him wanting to get Sarah, wanting to fulfill this prophecy? What does it have to do with anything? Does it have to do with his hunger, or does it have to do with her? Does he want her to be his bride and to spread vampirism, or is it really just about his appetite? Is he feeling bad about it? To me, it feels like forgetting Sarah Marshall. Vampire music, Dracula musical!

[1:07:55] Jake Saenz: Absolutely. He dies. Forgive me, now they steal Sarah. It looks like they're going to live happily ever after. They're singing a reprise of Braver Than We Are. The professor, by the way, just disappears.

[1:08:12] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, unnecessary.

[1:08:13] Jake Saenz: He just kind of goes away. And so the two lovers are singing. He's holding her in a very specific way so that she can be putting in her teeth. And then she turns around, and she has turned into a vampire, and she bites him. And then she starts singing a song, which is called Dance of the Vampires, and they leave. And then I didn't realize, until I saw the production of this number, that this is basically Don't Feed the Plants.

[1:08:51] Jeff Parsons: Yes, this is a moment where they take over.

[1:08:54] Jake Saenz: And where you live, right? Or in this theater!

[1:08:57] Jeff Parsons: Right, because that backdrop comes down of Times Square!

[1:09:01] Jake Saenz: Of Times Square! And all of the vampires, except not the vampires we really care about.

[1:09:12] Jeff Parsons: No, I see Miss Magda there.

[1:09:14] Jake Saenz: Okay.

[1:09:14] Jeff Parsons: I see Magda, that's all I care about. And I watched her the whole time. Because she's the one I cared about the most. I said, applause for you, girl. I was like, you better be a singer who moves. And so the ensemble comes on and sings this song of like, now we're taking over the world. And if you go out into the theater district, we're everywhere and we're taking over the world. And this is what it's like to feel young and alive. And it's a really fun song. And at the very, very end, there's a conductor in the orchestra pit, and he cuts everybody off, and he turns around, and it's Michael Crawford! And that's the end.

[1:10:01] Jake Saenz: Wow.

[1:10:02] Jeff Parsons: I mean, sure. I mean, there are two ways to look at it. You can either look at it, you could take it as they were trying to put on something that was going to be seriously good, or you can take it as something that is a catastrophe, but still has enjoyable elements because they're so bad. And coming from somebody who is a horror movie aficionado, like, we, as horror movie fans, we have given leeway to many a terrible movies. Film. You know, film in general, you know, but we forgive it and we embrace it because of the things that make them bad. We love these terribly written characters. We love the, you know, the bad humor. So it's hard for me to be such like a snob about this and be like, this just sucks, you know, whatever.

When honestly, you can find the beauty in trash. You really can. You can, it can be a great time. And when it comes to theater, theater is so ephemeral. It doesn't live on forever. I mean, yes, I guess it does kind of through a YouTube clip, but it's not the same.

[1:11:03] Jake Saenz: No, it's not the same as the people being in that audience. So I don't know. I just, I hope that by talking through this, people can walk away feeling lucky to have witnessed something that was either truly glorious or truly awful.

[1:11:19] Jeff Parsons: Sure. Because in my estimation, the only real definition of bad theater is forgettable.

[1:11:25] Jake Saenz: There we go.

[1:11:25] Jeff Parsons: And this is definitely not forgettable. You'll never forget the experience of watching something like this.

[1:11:31] Jake Saenz: Absolutely. And like, what a gift, truly what a gift.

[1:11:35] Jeff Parsons: Absolutely. And that's the magic of theater. That's the magic of art and, you know, visual media. Like, yeah, being forgettable is probably the worst thing that can happen. And this musical, I don't think is forgettable.

[1:11:47] Jake Saenz: No, I'm grateful to everyone who lost their money.

[1:11:51] Jeff Parsons: I'm creating it.

[1:11:53] Jake Saenz: I'm grateful to everybody who, like, maybe spent the best years of their vocal cords belting out these songs. Seriously, because these people are singing their... Max von Essen sings his face off. All of them are singing... He has that For Sarah number that's glorious.

[1:12:09] Jeff Parsons: Glorious. Absolutely beautiful.

[1:12:11] Jake Saenz: Didn't even talk about that one.

[1:12:12] Jeff Parsons: Literally. Who has the time? There are so many things that we could have gone moment by moment in this musical. Thank you so much for doing this with me, Jake.

[1:12:23] Jake Saenz: Thank you. I've had such a good time. I hope I haven't seemed too critical on it. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a silly musical about vampires. I mentioned earlier about some of the precedents that it set that Broadway kind of had to struggle with thereafter. The insecurity that Dance of the Vampires exhibits because they wanted to be in on the joke, then be the joke, is, I think, symptomatic of what musical theater has really had to suffer through for the past 20 years.

[1:12:53] Jeff Parsons: 20 years, yeah. This desire to be taken seriously and to not just be looked down upon as a theater nerd with no real...

[1:13:02] Jake Saenz: Substance.

[1:13:04] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, no substance to be admired. And the two vampire musicals that came out after this, Dracula and Lestat, swung so far in the other direction because they didn't want to be associated with Dance of the Vampires, that then they were just boring. I mean, also had good things about them.

[1:13:24] Jake Saenz: Of course, of course. And we talked about those on Patreon, exclamation point. But ultimately were boring because they wanted so desperately to be taken seriously. And I think that's something that we really have to contend with in our art form is owning what the art form does well and not really caring about the perception of it. We have such an amazing history of storytelling, of musical storytelling, that there is nothing that should make us feel insecure about owning it and feeling like we give a lot to the culture because of it.

[1:14:03] Jeff Parsons: Right. There's something to be learned from all these different projects. And maybe the vampire musical hasn't found the right balance. I think, obviously, it needs to meet somewhere in the middle between this and the Lestat and the Draculas. But I don't think that we can just write it off. We can't write off musical theater. When we have had such incredible works that are dramatic, incredible works that are campy, the musical theater genre can cover so many things and has the capability of doing them very well. And so, yeah, it's not fair for people to think that what we do is lowbrow entertainment. And also, to those people, I'm like, have your opinion, but it's not going to affect the way that I create my art.

[1:14:52] Jake Saenz: Of course.

[1:14:52] Jeff Parsons: You know what I mean? If our creations are born out of that insecurity, then we make big missteps like Dance of the Vampires.

[1:15:00] Jake Saenz: Absolutely. That is actually a brilliant way to punctuate this.

[1:15:04] Jeff Parsons: Thank you. Appreciate you. As always, if you have recommendations for shows you'd like us to cover on A Musical Theater Podcast, you can always email me at amusicalpodcast at gmail.com. Don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Instagram and Twitter.

[1:15:19] Jake Saenz: Should we still be on Twitter?

[1:15:20] Jeff Parsons: I don't know. You guys let me know. At Amusical Podcast, we're also on TikTok. We've got, boy, have I mentioned it a lot this episode, Patreon! We're for only $1 a month. You can support the regular show and receive bonus content. We also have our TeePublic store where you can buy designs and in doing so, support Broadway Cares, Equity Fights, AIDS.

[1:15:44] Jake Saenz: Oh, my gosh.

[1:15:46] Jeff Parsons: What a fun episode. Thank you for listening to it. And you got to know I'm so grateful for you being part of this podcasting community. Hey, Jake, how do we follow you? Tell us about your podcast, all of those sorts of things.

[1:16:01] Jake Saenz: Yeah, so I am one of two hosts of the comedic horror film podcast, called Fear the Talking Queers, where you can find anywhere that you listen to your podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor. It's sort of fun. Every week we do a new movie and sort of in the same vein of this podcast. And yeah, it's just sort of like a silly fun way to just kind of break them down, not take them too seriously. But we're a good time. We're a little R-rated. But if you're okay with that, head on over to Fear the Talking Queers. Come on over!

[1:16:34] Jeff Parsons: Yes, come on over.

[1:16:35] Jake Saenz: And then you can find us on Instagram at Fear the Talking Queers. Our social media is a lot of fun. We put a lot of effort into it. So yeah, if you want to come over, think about it like this. Maybe you're like, I don't know, a podcast about horror films. Know that it's hosted by two former, well, one former and one current musical theater gay. So come and join us.

[1:17:01] Jeff Parsons: Has he retired his musical theater gay card?

[1:17:02] Jake Saenz: Yeah, yeah. You know, he was sort of like a youth theater. We met doing a production of Rent, actually.

[1:17:08] Jeff Parsons: Oh my gosh.

[1:17:08] Jake Saenz: Yeah, back in 2011. And so we met doing theater. So we both have, you know, a little musical theater knowledge. We sort of spurt out our little references here and there. And we hope that, you know, maybe if you guys come over, you can appreciate them more than maybe the average horror film fan.

[1:17:24] Jeff Parsons: More than the other people.

[1:17:26] Jake Saenz: I know. Our constant Rent references. Our constant... We reference that one probably more than any other musical. I don't know why. I think it's just because it bonds us a little bit. But yeah, come and come and join us. It's amazing.

[1:17:38] Jeff Parsons: Thank you for having me.

[1:17:40] Jake Saenz: Oh my gosh. Thank you, Jake. This was so much fun. You're awesome.

[1:17:44] Jeff Parsons: Everybody, thank you for listening. And remember, garlic.

[1:17:50] Jake Saenz: How could you forget?

[1:18:04] Jeff Parsons: How could you forget?