Queerguru’s Andrew Hebden reviews COUNT DYKULA : the story of a butch goth sapphic sucker with a problem

Count Dykula ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎Soho Theatre, London  It’s February. You barely made it through Dry January. Valentine’s Day is haunting you once again. It all feels a little bit flat. What you need is something to cheer you up. We found it for you.It’s not great art, grand poetry, or eloquent verse (which by the way we are now adopting as our Grindr profile name). It will make you groan and roll your eyes repeatedly. And deliberately. But dammit it, it will give you some belly laughs and it will, at this most desperate time of the year, cheer you up. It’s Count Dykula by Airlock Theatre, at the Soho Theatre, running from now til Saturday 1st March.Count Dykula (Rosanna Suppa), a butch goth sapphic sucker, has a problem. She can’t scare people anymore. And if you can’t scare people then vampires are just left being rather creepy with odd digestion. As an answer to her problems Dykula sets off to study at Scare University (Scare U). Sadly she feels equally out of place there. At Scare U they embrace the contemporary image of vampires being lusty, busty femme fatales. Flat chested and ‘athletic’ Dykula is no teen Twilight fantasy. To make matters worse the principal (Eleanor Colville) of the university is the big boobed sex bomb vampire type and intends to make the school co-ed with humans and enforce rigidly stereotyped roles for monsters. Count Dykula enrolls some other misfits (played by Colville and Robbie Taylor Hunt) to overthrow the tyrannical regime and let monsters just be themselves. Part pantomime, part musical, part satire of teen movies it’s all raucous romp. Written, performed and directed by the same three people (requiring some nimble moves and much smashing of the fourth wall) it somehow feels like a cast of thousands. There is nothing subtle about it (except a rather fun repeat joke about an unsilent B in subtle). The cast chew every clownish line with relish (and burger, bun, lettuce and onions). It’s juvenile, but by the clever kids. It’s bound to be marmite to some people but if you are the panto type crowd then there is a lark to be had if you are willing to let loose your least serious self.Queerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA and cultural STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing, and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement, he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre, and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day