Dorian, the dour offspring of famous vampire Depend Dracula, manipulates 4 mortals into making an attempt to depose his demonic daddy with dire benefits in Enthrallment, a new gothic musical by writer-composer Elizabeth Nidever.
This ambitious primary exertion attributes an impressively huge forged that is cursed with quantity over high quality. The actresses fare superior — especially Janine Papin in her too-temporary visual appeal as the imperious Prince of Darkness — but their male counterparts present a muddled melange of inconsistent accents and acting styles. Be informed that the putting blonde singer who starred in the teaser introduced final thirty day period seemingly exited the manufacturing shortly in advance of opening his substitute warrants kudos for stepping in at the very last minute, but he simply can’t maintain the psychological or musical pitch his job necessitates. In simple fact, only Kat Akers manages to create a coherent character as a cynical trans violinist who closes the clearly show on a chilling a cappella significant observe.
Although every person on phase is naturally providing it the outdated college test, they’ve invested their efforts in a script that never appears to know no matter whether it is intended to be a comedy or thriller. Enthrallment is as well stiffly straight-faced to be humorous, but anything from the Moulin Rouge-meets-Madonna costumes to the clunky combat choreography is as well schlocky to be genuinely frightening. Most egregiously, right after its lugubrious titular opening amount, this alleged musical forgets to aspect any true tunes for virtually forty minutes, then hurriedly shoehorns in a sequence of songs that all audio like rejects from Jekyll & Hyde accompanied by a keyboard-pounding housecat. And the plot mechanics even appear to disregard basic guidelines of vampirism, as decreed by equally Bram and Buffy.
It pains me to say this as a longtime supporter of the two the genre and director Terry Gianotsos, but Enthrallment each bites and sucks. The best I can say is that, in contrast to specific other dumpster fires at this pageant, at least this show’s unbelievable badness is not monotonous.
Tickets and present info: Enthrallment: The Musical