Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel "Dracula" remains the gold standard for vampire stories. His was far from the first such tale, but it remains the most memorable. Many other highly imaginative riffs on the theme, however, were added to the genre during the century since. Notably original variations have included Richard Matheson’s thrice filmed 1956 novel "I Am Legend," Theodore Sturgeon’s "Some of Your Blood" (1961), Anne Rice’s LeStat series (at least the early volumes), and Conor McPherson’s play "St. Nicholas" (currently staged at Cygnet Theatre).

Many, many stage versions of "Dracula" have also trod the boards (not surprisingly, since Stoker himself had a theatrical background), including a hit 1927 Broadway production staring Bela Lugosi, which became the classic 1931 film. North Coast Repertory’s current "Dracula" employs Steven Dietz’ script – overproduced at the Old Globe in 1997.

Dietz’ sturdy and stageworthy version works better in NCRT’s intimate house than it did at the Old Globe’s large and lavish theatre factory. It’s truly a case of less is more, and the art of indirection. That which is suggested, hinted at, or barely glimpsed can be far scarier than blatant gruesome effects. (In films, study the ghosts in the 1963 "The Haunting" and the Martians in the 1953 "War of the Worlds.")

Even this NCRT production, effective as it is under Christopher Vered’s direction, might have traveled still further in the direction of simplicity. Marty Burnett’s setting is diligently designed and ingeniously constructed. And it usually handles the show’s many shifts of time and place smoothly, yet not without some clunky and too obvious moments of transition. A few moveables are indispensable, most conspicuously Lucy’s fourposter bed, where she wastes away under the nocturnal visitations of the Count.

But Renfield’s stage right lunatic asylum cell here seems far too cumbersome and literal. An escape from it has to be theatrically contrived so that Renfield can have his big final scene center stage. That and much else could have been more lightfootedly achieved, perhaps with more curtains, more swiftly pivoting screens, even more lighting effects (provided handsomely already by M. Scott Grabau) and those ever-useful multitudinous gobos.

NCRT’s "Dracula" provides some of its finest moments when a vampire is but instantly seen in a nearly stroboscopic flash. More of this sort of thing could have effectively been done. And the art of editing can work as efficiently on stage as in film. How much better quickly to cut away from Dracula’s fangs approaching a swanlike stretched supine female neck, rather than dwell on the slobbering predation.

Dietz’ script artfully follows Stoker’s novel, written to resemble a collection of documents (journals, letters, reports, even transcriptions of recording cylinders), in its fragmented presentation of multiple viewpoints and shifting chronology. A supremely theatrical moment, excellently done in this production, practically turns the small stage into a sort of three-ring circus, with simultaneous stormy scenes – right, left, and center – of Renfield raving in his cell, Lucy transfixed at her window, and Harker trapped in the Transylvanian castle – all of them at once in thrall to that hideous strength of the vampire.

The players can hardly be faulted. Their performances are perfectly placed in earnest sincerity and late Victorian formality that avoids catering more than is necessary to the supernatural melodrama of the story (which can well take care of itself). Some odd brief moments in Dietz’s script, however, nearly undermine this delicate balance. The playwright begins the show with a strange sort of prologue – a nearly facetious artifice-flaunting monologue by Renfield, dining in a restaurant, in which he tells us directly what we already know anyways: that he and everybody else are the fictional creations of Bram Stoker. Renfield is then served a dead rat under a humidor by the creepy waiter (who turns out later to be Dracula), goes bonkers, and is forced into a strait-jacket by attendants who throw the raving nutcase into his cell. Another slightly jarring note is later struck when Lucy (Christy Yael) and Mina (Brenda Dodge) romp in a purely innocent yet suggestively erotic manner under the counterpane of the fourposter. This, I suppose, can be rationalized, though, as a hint at the sexual suppression rife under the veneer of Victorian respectability (of which, indeed, Dracula himself seems emblematic).

Poor mad Renfield – devouring spiders and flies whilst mooning over his evil "master" – is usually the gem role in any dramatization of "Dracula," and is no less so here. Sean Sullivan plays the part excellently, making skillful use of the script’s opportunities to twist instantly back and forth between lunatic possession and startling moments of sarcastic lucidity and even pathos. He reminded me, alas, of some brilliant and doomed alcoholics I have known – no less themselves in bondage to their chemical "master."

Renfield’s laurels, however, are challenged in this production by that brilliant and compelling actor Robert Grossman, noble and irresistible in the role of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, the original fearless vampire killer who pursues the bloodsuckers, with both Christian and scientific paraphernalia, as diligently and righteously as ever Simon Wiesenthal hunted down Nazis.

You would think Count Dracula himself might be the central focus of any such production. And Matt Thompson does extremely well in that role. But Dracula ideally is and should be a more shadowy and mysterious figure, and the less we directly perceive or understand of him, the better a show is for it. Thompson is at his very best as the older Dracula – the one whom Jonathan Harker, Dracula’s London real estate agent, first meets up with in Transylvania – before the immortal Count becomes rejuvenated with new blood. The delayed scenes between this ancient Dracula and the at first totally unsuspecting young Harker (played with ideal hunkish wide-eyed naivety by Jason Heil) are very well realized.

Another strength of the Dietz script is in following Stoker’s novel in taking the fight against Dracula back to Transylvania again. Most adaptations employ the tempting shortcut of curtailing the struggle in London, where Dracula has come to prey. But this version efficiently and swiftly (just as in the book) has the little band of comrades, led by the intrepid Van Helsing, pursue Dracula out of England and across the Europe in a desperate last-ditch effort and a final fight that seems nearly as valiant and disproportionate (their mortal human frailty against Dracula’s vast evil supernatural strength) as King Henry V’s outnumbered battle along with his "happy few" against the French at Agincourt on St. Crispin’s Day – and with a similar feeling of "Deo Gracias" and "Non Nobis Domine" at the almost unexpectedly triumphant conclusion.

The cast is rounded out by Christopher M. Williams as a most upstanding and devoted Dr. Seward, and Michelle Procopio, Dylan Seaton, Sunny Smith, and Berlyn James Wieland in multiple roles. Chris Luessman provided the sound design, and Michelle Hunt designed the effective and atmospheric period costumes.

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