Dracula Triumphant

A close relation of mine plays one of the lead roles and I flew over to Sydney to watch them perform. They had the following to tell me:

1. The director was a real bastard. I told them that "Yeah, that's pretty standard" and they said "I know - but he was worse."

2. Their publicist wouldn't have anything to do with them. I'm not sure why.

3. Early on in the proceedings, the Royal Theatre wanted rid of them ASAP, presumably over some administrative arguments

4. One of these arguments was that they hadn't bothered to get the set approved in advance. The show wasn't "minimalist", it was just poorly organised.

5. They were promised real costumes, not some cheap tie in with Calvin Klein.

6. The actors, including the leads, were retained on an honourariam basis. They were informed that it was just paperwork, that they weren't going to make people come in from all over the country only to not pay them in the end.

7. Of course, as the show undersold terribly, nobody got paid.

8. The Preview was the first time they'd actually run through the entire performance from start to finish.

9. The musical director didn't bother to check whether the singer's he'd brought on could actually sing the parts he'd written, and didn't bother to transpose the parts when he realised they couldn't.

Finally, they had the utter gall to beleive that an unknown production, from an unknown director, with an unknown cast, and an unknown composer, could fill a prestidgious inner-Sydney theatre for two weeks and break even. Not only was the actual plot, music, and overall presentation amateur and lacklustre, the organisation and integrity of the producer and directors were at best amateur and at worst absolutely pathetic.

Even if all of the above points had been resolved the overall plot would have still been contrived and the music repetitive. Is there so much cocaine in Sydney that this sort of thing can make it all the way to production?

My relation has wasted weeks of time on this flop and my family have wasted money on keeping them in Sydney while they rehearse. In all honesty we expected a professional production and I beleive my relation will dig a lot deeper into the reputation of those controlling the production in the future.