By D’Arcy Morrell –
Kim Morgan Dean is having a remarkable year at Barter Theatre. This season, she’s brought country music legend Patsy Cline to life, charmed audiences as Miss Adelaide in Guys & Dolls, and soared as Beverly Bass in Come From Away. Now, she takes on another iconic role: Doctor Van Helsing in Dracula.
Beware: with all its blood and guts, this isn’t your grandmother’s Dracula. Kate Hamill’s adaptation, directed by Barter’s Producing Artistic Director Katy Brown, is a sharp, wickedly-funny take on the Bram Stoker classic. Among Hamill’s most noticeable departures is her version of the famous vampire-hunting doctor, reimagining Van Helsing as an almost Annie Oakley-esque woman rather than the typical “withered, old Dutch man” audiences (and maybe a few characters) are expecting.
Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of the supernatural, an impressive collection of weapons, and a strength that goes far beyond the physical, Dean’s Van Helsing bursts onto the scene with a confidence that only a seasoned veteran could possess. Yet despite her qualifications and obvious expertise, she is quickly brushed aside as nothing more than a “quack.” Dean sees her as someone who has “probably been the smartest person in every room,” but has spent a lifetime learning that being right doesn’t always mean being heard.
Fortunately, Van Helsing isn’t one to back down from a fight, and in Dracula, there are plenty of them. The role demands a physical fearlessness from Dean, particularly when she comes face-to-face with Sean Campos, who pulls double duty as the titular Dracula and the production’s fight choreographer. “Neither one of us wanted to shy away from how brutal it is,” Dean says. “The brutality is the point.”
Years of working together on Barter’s stages have given Dean and Campos the freedom to embrace that brutality without holding back. Dean likens acting with a trusted scene partner to flying on a trapeze, hoping the other person will be there to catch you. Add stage combat to the equation, however, and the stakes are quite literally higher. “Sean and I just trust each other so implicitly,” she says. “I know if something goes wrong…he will go with me no matter what. He’s catching me on that trapeze.” That trust, she says, “lets you do it with more abandon, which, as an actor, you always want to be able to do.”
Dean and the rest of the cast brought that same sense of abandon to finding the strange and wonderful balance between Hamill’s horror and humor. “We played a lot with, ‘Let’s move the needle to comedy [and] really go for it. Okay, maybe we don’t want to go that far. Now let’s go 100% away from it,’” Dean says. Surprisingly, the two extremes often fed each other. “Sometimes the dark stuff gets darker because of that funny stuff…The audience almost needs [the humor] to give you permission to do all the dark stuff.”
For Dean, the trick was keeping the real woman alive beneath Van Helsing’s inherently “archetypal” persona. “You have to honor that and also make her a real person,” she says. That means even when Hamill hands her an obvious punchline, Van Helsing herself isn’t in on the joke. “I’ve got some lines that maybe are funny to you, but I have to be checking her for vampire bites. I have a patient.”
Perhaps no relationship showcases that humor better than Dean’s work with fellow Resident Company member—and real-life best friend—Zacchaeus Kimbrell, who plays the stubborn Doctor George Seward. Onstage, the two could hardly be more at odds. Seward dismisses Van Helsing as a “quack” and resists nearly everything she tells him, something Van Helsing takes more than a little pleasure in. “Anytime Van Helsing gets under his skin, I think she enjoys it—and I know that Kim enjoys it,” Dean laughs. “She loves that she can get under this guy’s skin.”
Their friendship also means neither actor has to be particularly polite about it. “We’re always on that knife’s edge,” Dean says. “There were rehearsals where we did not make it through things because we’d start laughing.” For two characters who spend much of Dracula driving each other crazy, Dean and Kimbrell are clearly having an awfully good time doing it.
That kind of history is one of the unique gifts of Barter’s Resident Acting Company. Production after production, these actors get to discover just how far they can challenge one another, and know who will be there when they take the leap. For Dean, after a season spent becoming everyone from a country music superstar to a stake-wielding vampire hunter, perhaps that’s the thread connecting them all. Every time she becomes someone new, she gets to do it alongside people she knows well enough to play without holding back.
Special thanks to Creeper’s End Lodging and Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol for making this production possible. Dracula is playing on Barter’s Gilliam Stage now through October 31.
