What remains of Dracula when genres are dynamited, in every sense of the word? After New York and London, the queer and zany parody of Bram Stoker’s classic arrives in France.
Having become a narcissistic, pansexual rock star clad in leather pants, Dracula gets a serious refresh. Created in New York in 2023 before moving on to London in 2025, Dracula, the hilariously terrifying parody! arrives for the first time in France, in a French adaptation directed by Gaspard Legendre. The starting point remains Bram Stoker’s novel: Jonathan Harker, an English real estate agent, travels to Transylvania to meet the Count who is preparing his installation in London. But Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen turn Victorian Gothic into a playground to dynamite gender roles. Six performers thus share no fewer than 19 characters, in a burlesque mechanic where one readily changes identity as one changes costume.
Gaspard Legendre embraces the heritage of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and proclaims a piece “delightfully queer”. The show plays with Van Helsing, the famous adversary of Dracula traditionally depicted as a man, who here becomes a vampire hunter. This can upset the relationships between the characters and bring out the misogyny of its collaborators. The reversal is not isolated since the authors, Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen, explicitly plan that their characters can be performed by actors regardless of gender, origin, age or morphology. The dramaturgy is entrusted to the researcher Ezra Baudou, who works on theater from queer and decolonial thoughts.
A casting as versatile as can be
Yet for the comedic machine to work, it must run smoothly. Here, it largely rests on a troupe condemned to permanent metamorphosis. Valentin Nerdenne, actor and drag artist who has appeared in Rent and Stop with Your Lies, does not abandon the role of Dracula while around him identities waltz. Caroline Aïn, who has been on the world tour of Notre-Dame de Paris, embodies Van Helsing and Mina, one of the women coveted by Dracula. Aurélien Mallard plays her father and Renfield, the vampire’s devoted servant; Cyril Guillou becomes Jonathan Harker, the real estate agent who goes to meet the Count, but also several suitors. Robin Ganacheau, a dancer in Oliver Twist, winner at the Molières 2026, finally portrays Lucy, Jonathan’s fiancée whom the vampire also targets.
Ce jeu de rôles se poursuit dans les costumes de Laurian Ruffle et Neil Nelson, artiste burlesque connue sous le nom de Hot Headed Christine, qui puisent dans le drag et le cinéma de genre. Même goût du mouvement du côté des chorégraphies, confiées à Clément Wohrer, danseur passé par Kiddy Smile et figure des battles de whacking sous le nom d’Apollo. Sur scène, Benjamin Mornet imagine un décor de portes qui évoquent autant des passages que des cercueils, plongé dans un univers très coloré et porté par la musique originale de Christian Auer. Le gothique de Dracula bascule ainsi vers un imaginaire pop, entre série B, cabaret et comédie.
>> Produced by Théâtre du Héron, Dracula, the hilariously terrifying parody! is staged at the Apollo Théâtre, in the 11e arrondissement of Paris, from September 21.
