It’s just about Halloween, and no doubt you’re being bombarded with horror movie propositions, promising to scare the living daylights out of you.
Wouldn’t you rather laugh?
That’s the premise of Pocket Sandwich Theater’s current show, “Dracula the Melodrama,” running through Nov. 11.
In melodramas, the acting is over-the-top, there’s no such thing as being too campy, and the audience is encouraged to participate.
You say “Hooray!” when something good is going on, “Boo,” and hiss (in that order, mind you) when something bad is underfoot, and “Aw…” when something sweet occurs.
And you get to throw popcorn! Of course, popcorn only travels so far. Those who are not close enough to the stage to badger the actors are resigned to popcorn fights among their friends and neighbors.
Remember to throw only plain, white popcorn, now. People don’t like it when ice-cream covered popcorn sticks on their sweaters. Their boyfriends will threaten to kick your butt.
A good piece of advice is to cover your drinks and food. People think it’s really funny to throw the popcorn at and into the goody you paid good money to put into your mouth.
With such rowdy behavior away from the stage, one would hope that the antics on stage would help diffuse the highly energized audience. However, “Dracula the Melodrama,” directed by theater co-owner, Joe Dickinson, is much too tame and too kid-friendly to really be such a medium. And that’s the way Pocket Sandwich Theatre likes it.
Pocket Sandwich Theater, which also serves dinner an hour and a half before each show, promises a production the whole family can enjoy, including your preteen siblings and your elderly grandparents (and your babysitting charges, for that matter). The kids will get a kick out of the unorthodox allowance of tossing food at people.
The story of Dracula is ripe for melodrama. Dracula terrorizes an England community, ruining marriages and killing a few while looking for the perfect bride. The stuffy, unaware Victorians simply do not know what to do!
The performances in “Dracula the Melodrama” are amply hammy. The actors use eyebrow raises, the traditional theatrical range of vocalizations (which include everything from monotone deliveries to loud bursts of dialogue to singing) and visual silliness to great effect. The metaphysical moments are a hoot. For example, in real life, wouldn’t you be scared if you heard voice-overs?
There is also plenty of innocent sexual innuendo. It’s all family friendly, but you’ll still chuckle.
What audience members of all ages will enjoy is young Jamie Wenger’s turn as obnoxious brat Melissa. Wenger gets plenty of popcorn thrown her way, not to mention the boos and hisses every time she appears, the cheers when her character meets ill fates and the remarks the crowd screams at her.
Wenger is probably having a blast playing such a bad character, but I personally fear for her future emotional and mental well-being.
The best part of Pocket Sandwich Theatre’s melodramas is, of course, the popcorn action. In between acts, there is always one to two mini-skirmishes that can only be solved with a dumping of a box full of popcorn.
For some reason the show keeps giving actors these hallow props, whose openings are just calling to be aimed at.
Overall, “Dracula the Melodrama” is a nice break from all the very serious theater that is constantly performed around here. In fact, anyone can do bad theater, but it takes art to do consciously bad theater well.
Christy Vutam is a sophomore Journalism major. She can be reached for further questions or comment at [email protected].