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The character of Count Dracula from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, has remained popular over the years, and many forms of media have adopted the character in various forms. In their book Dracula in Visual Media, authors John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart declared that no other horror character or vampire has been emulated more times than Count Dracula. Most variations of Dracula across film, comics, television and documentaries predominantly explore the character of Dracula as he was first portrayed in film, with only a few adapting Stoker's original narrative more closely. These including borrowing the look of Count Dracula in both the Universal's series of Dracula and Hammer's series of Dracula, including include the characters clothing, mannerisms, physical features hair style and his motivations such as wanting to be in a home away from Europe. Stage Drama A limited stage adaptation of Stoker's story was performed to a small audience at the Lyceum Theatre in the year of the book's publication, in order to protect Stoker's copyright. The script for this four-hour performance is lost. In 1924, the British producer Hamilton Deane premiered a stage version of Dracula at the Grand Theatre in Derby, England. This version of the play was a modernized retelling of Stoker's story. The play's success led to Deane taking it on tour for the next three years. The play opened in London's Little Theatre on 14 February 1927, where it sold well while not being critically well received. After seeing the play in London, American producer Horace Liveright bought the rights for Broadway, and hired John L. Balderston to Americanize Deane's text. The Broadway version featured actors who would later be cast into the Universal film, including Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Edward Van Sloan as Prof. Van Helsing, Herbert Bunston as Dr. Seward. Dracula opened at New York's Fulton Theatre on 5 October 1927, where it ran for 265 performances finally closing in May 1928. Gary Don Rhodes described the play as "taking America by storm", a statement backed up by a 1930 article in the Chicago Tribune claiming that the play "has been rolling around the country ever since its first vogue two or three seasons ago, coaxing money into box offices that had abandoned hope of the drama, and of the shriek-and-shudder plays of the last five years it easily leads the list." O. D. Woodward purchased rights to present Dracula on the West Coast, and the play opened at the Biltmore Theater in Los Angeles on 25 June 1928. The play was originally booked for a four-week engagement, but proved so popular that it was held over, closing on 18 August 1928. The play would continue in other countries in 1929 such as Australia. Lugosi would return to act in the play in 1933 after his appearance in the film Dracula (1931) and would return again to the play in 1941 for a two-year tour and again later in 1947. A revival of the play by Leo Shull called Genius, Inc., opened in December 1942 featuring a Dracula with a Toothbrush moustache. John Carradine took to the stage as Dracula in the early 1950s. When the play performed in Detroit, several accidents happened on stage leading audiences to laugh at what were supposed to be scary moments. Frank Langella took on the role of Count Dracula, beginning 7 August 1967, an adaptation that William Gibson, director of the Berkshire declared to be "the worst play of the season". The Deane-Balderston adaptation of Dracula was described by Bruce Scivally as "seemingly in performance every year since its debut". Variations involving Count Dracula were performed as plays in parody such as Fangs Ain't What They Used to Be in 1969 and I'm Sorry, the Bridge is Out, You'll Have to Spend the Night in 1970. Other plays like Dracula Sabbat from 1970 was basically a scripted black mass featuring nudity and simulated sex acts. For the plays 50th anniversary in America, it was developed again with Langella in the lead. On the play's reveal it was praised for its sets designed by Edward Gorey and Langella's performance which Scivally proclaimed "reclaimed the vampire from a decade of camp and parody and presented Dracula with grace, dignity and a healthy dose of sex appeal." It was sold out for the first two weeks leading to merchandizing of the play with Gorey-themed wallpaper, a toy theatre, and short-lived fashion of men wearing capes in Manhattan. Scivally stated that after the 1970s ended an "explosion" of vampire plays continued into the next decades. Other Dracula plays continued through the 1980s to the 21st century in Chicago and New York with several being variations on the Deane-Balderston adaptation, new stories or parodies featuring actors like Raul Julia, Daniel Day-Lewis and Martin Landau performing as Count Dracula. Musical Early musical adaptions of Dracula played for camp. At the Dublin Theater Festival in 1965, there was a musical comedy Dearest Dracula. The musical contained 15 songs and received a positive review from Robert B. Byrnes of the Los Angeles Times. Other musical adaptions would follow such as Dracula, A Musical Nightmare (1978) starring Joe Spano. Musical adaptations continued with Jack Sharkey's Dracula, The Musical? in 1982 which was written under the pen name of Rick Abbot. Possessed, The Dracula Musical was produced off-Broadway with a production of $1 million. The story is re-imagined inside a modern-day asylum. It received a negative review by Alvin Klein of The New York Times, who suggested that "Perhaps there are no bad ideas for musicals, only bad musicals, like this one." The United Kingdom had Dracula, Another Bloody Musical which opened at the Westminster Theatre in London. In 1998 Halifax's Neptune Theatre debuted Dracula: A Chamber Musical which ran for which ran for six months at Canada's Stratford Festival in 1999. This version was not a parody or based on the Deane-Balderston play, but more of an iteration of the original novel. In 2001, Dracula, the Musical premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse where it was staged by Des McAnuff. McAnuff stated believed that "there's been a tendency to parody [Dracula] or to not trust it. We all felt that if we really tapped into what made the book powerful, that really would translate on stage." The musical received poor reviews from the Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune. Joop van den Ende saw a workshop of Dracula, the Musical and opened it on Broadway in 2004 adding new songs and different staging. This version was also not received well by critics. The show closed after 154 performances, but proved to be a hit in Europe. Opera Prior to Stoker's novel, there were operas based on vampire fiction such as Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr composed in 1828 based on John Polidori's short work "The Vampyre" (1819). The later half of the 20th Century had Count Dracula had composers attempting vampire themed operas with Count Dracula, such as Sue-Ellen Case "non-opera" Johnny Appleseed/D.... Discover the Wendy Swanscombe popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Wendy Swanscombe books.