Most of us have fantasized about being Dracula.
Sure, sunlight can vaporize you and somewhere there is a stake with your name on it.

But with luck, you can dodge those bullets for centuries, and meanwhile the upside is phenomenal:

Immortal? Check.

Irresistibly seductive? Check.

Superhuman strength? Check.

Turn into a giant bat? Check.

Wear a cape? Check.

Dracula maintains his hold on the popular imagination more than a century after novelist Bram Stoker introduced us to the suave and sophisticated vampire.

"He's a symbol of our dark side," said British playwright Mark Healy, who this week will witness the world premiere of his new adaptation, "Dracula: Lord of the Undead," at Lancaster's Fulton Opera House. "We are all attracted to the darkness and things we shouldn't be attracted to, really."

Healy knows he's traveling a well-worn path.

"It's been adapted more than any other single book outside the Bible," he said. "However, I think only about 10 percent of people who know the story of Dracula have actually read the book."

Healy said many of those adaptations were less than faithful to Stoker's novel. By going back to the original text, he found fodder for new surprises, particularly by pondering an obvious question the book doesn't really address.

"Why does Dracula come to this place at this specific time?" Healy asked. "Why has he left his homeland after centuries to come such a long way, and at Halloween?"

In Healy's play, the answer lies in the meaning of the undead count's name (literally "of the dragon") and its link to the dragon mentioned in the Book of Revelations.

He won't say more.

"It's nice to retell a well-known story and see if you can surprise people and play with their expectations," he said.

Healy is hanging out in Lancaster this month, watching Fulton Theatre artistic director Michael D. Mitchell and his cast work out the staging of his play. He's also serving as playwright in residence at Franklin & Marshall College, an arrangement that makes his stay financially possible.

"Playwrights are not all that well-paid," he said, laughing.

Healy has written several plays, including an adaptation of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" that premiered at the Fulton in 2003.

Now he's applied his skill to Dracula. He's appeared as an actor in two productions of "Dracula," and his mother is from the English town of Whitby, where much of the novel is set.

"I spent a lot of time in Whitby," Healy said. "There's even a Dracula museum there."

He's intrigued by the observation that Dracula's victims in some ways contribute to their own fates.

"You have to invite a vampire into your life," Healy said. "He doesn't just come crashing through the window, like a Frankenstein's monster might. You have to invite him over the threshold, and there has to be something in you that draws him." Source: Penn Live.com

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