The blood sucking protagonist of author Bram Stoker's Gothic horror 1897 novel, “Dracula,” comes back to life in all manner of scary and funny incarnations throughout the calendar year - but especially at Halloween.
The Romanian count simply will not die.
And now Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, Germantown’s museum of 19th-century daily life, will host a new one-man production of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” The haunting show will run for four performances from Oct. 25 to 27, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.
The actor who will play the frightening vampire is definitely not a case of type-casting. Quite the opposite. Steven Bray is a cheerful, friendly gentleman with a quick laugh and long resume.
Bray grew up in the Pacific Northwest but now lives in Las Vegas. (He is not a casino gambler. He says the life of an actor is enough of a gamble.) Bray has appeared in 49 films and 20 stage plays as well as TV shows, webisodes and TV commercials for Gorilla Tape and Best Buy.
When asked about his favorite role, Bray said in a phone interview last week, “It's always the one I am currently doing because I am so glad to be working. I have only been to Philadelphia once to visit a friend on the board of the Walnut Street Theater, but I loved Philly then and am very anxious to come back.”
Theater critic Patrick Chavis said Bray's work in a Hollywood Fringe festival production “really tied everything together for me. He plays an 'I’m a cool dad that just wants to be down with the friends,' and he’s hilarious when he does that.”
On stage, Bray recently played multiple characters in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Farnsworth Invention,” a play about the invention of television. (Sorkin was the creator and head writer of TV's “The West Wing.”) He has also performed on stage as Trigorin in Chekov’s “The Seagull,” Dr. Jim Bayliss in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” and Dylan Thomas in “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” which featured oversized puppetry.
In his latest movie, Bray portrayed a grief-stricken husband struggling with the sudden loss of his wife in the horror film “Kin of Sin.” Up next, in January, he will play the lead role in a new musical on a Las Vegas stage about composer George Gershwin called “Ghostwriter.”
“The music is very much in the spirit of George Gershwin,” Bray said. “The book and music are by a woman named M. Parker, a former student of Henry Mancini who is remarkably talented. We think it is wonderful, and we are hopeful that it will be picked up by a major theater in Los Angeles or New York.”
Bray moved to Las Vegas to care for his ailing parents there. He sometimes takes to the hiking trails of Red Rock Canyon but not in summer. “When it is well over 100 degrees here,” he said, “I just stay indoors with the air conditioning.” He is a graduate of Eastern Washington University with a B.A. in Journalism and holds a double major in music and Theatre from Whitworth University, where he also taught for a year. After graduation from college, Bray worked for a newspaper in Spokane, Washington, but his first love has always been the theater. His acting skills were further honed in the two-year conservatory program at Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City.
When Bray takes the stage at Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, he will join a fraternity of Draculas. According to monstercomplex.com, more than 200 films have been made that feature Count Dracula, a number that is second only to films featuring Sherlock Holmes.
Many aficionados regard the best version as the 1931 film, “Dracula,” starring Bela Lugosi, whose iconic performance as Dracula is considered to have made the character more famous than the story itself. Lugosi's Eastern European accent and menacingly slow speech are considered to be one of the most famous vocal performances of all time.
In the novel, lawyer Jonathan Harker takes a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire who drinks human blood, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, decide to hunt down and kill Dracula.
For tickets or other information, visit actorstevenbray.com or ebenezermaxwellmansion.org or call 215-438-1861. Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion is at 200 W. Tulpehocken St. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.
