It was a dark and stormy night...
Wait a minute.
It was actually a brisk, breezy, beautiful day, in the low 60s, that day in October 2015 when Carversville couple Drew Desky and Dane Levens left their aisle seats at the Bucks County Playhouse, vowing their faith and devotion to each other and, judging from their producing track record, never to stage a dud.
Married to each other, joined at the hip ceremony on the stage, the ever-playful pair did what theatrical producers are want to do — make a riveting, meaningful ritual of the respect they have for theater and each other, wedding the festivity and fealty the important day’s dynamic deserved and offered.
As for the dark and stormy night? It’s a’comin’ — but as a comedy: “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors,” mischievous mega bites of madness, opens Sept. 18 at off-Broadway’s New World Stages, just an IV line away from the Westside Theater. There, “Little Shop of Horrors,” for which Desky and Levens serve as producers, has been planted the past four years.
Do Audrey II of “Horrors” and Dracula, both suckers for succulent victims, share the same bloodline? Are they…blood relatives?
Levens laughs. “The keys that connect the two shows? They’re very funny.”
In a theatrical way, Desky and Levens own the keys to a theatrical kingdom they have been structuring for years. Indeed they chose the Bucks County Playhouse for their wedding — and the nearby bucolic Barley Sheaf Farm for its sylvan setting of a reception — because of its pastoral possibilities.
“We started coming to Bucks County in 2004 and loved it so much that we bought a weekend home there in 2007,” relates Desky, who, like his partner in Drew & Dane Productions, hails from Hell’s Kitchen in New York, moving there after years of building business careers in their native California.
Now the two make it their business to have theater inform their lives, which circles back to Bucks and its Circle of Life for the two. The county, notes Desky, “has such respect for the arts and culture, and the Playhouse has brought us so much joy.”
And purpose. The two men are members of BCP’s Artists Circle, which casts them in prominent philanthropic roles at the playhouse. That activity shares the spotlight with another major activity, dear to both of these producers, who have “Dear Evan Hansen” to their production credit: supporting young artists on each rung of the ladder from page to stage.
And now, the wedding: “We are the first and only couple ever to get married at the Playhouse,” says Desky.
You can look it up: “We created a playbill for the occasion, with Act I about the wedding and five of our dear friends,” all performing artists, in attendance, he says of Kevin Spirtas, Jason Tam, Christina Bianco, Darius de Haas and Karen Mason. “And Act II is about the reception at Barley Sheaf.”
The producing couple’s career playbill is currently prolific with four musicals and two plays on its plate.
“We have so many balls in the air, it’s so exhausting,” says Levens of a leviathan schedule, without lament. “We enjoy it.”
What’s not to enjoy? Bat man’s coming to the stage, and Gotham’s got him: Dracula as a Gen Z, pansexual night stalker, written by Gordon Greenberg (also the director) and Steve Rosen.
“Dracula,” perceived originally by Bram Stoker in 1897, is poked and stoked here on his way to a punchline, and not meant as a creepy caricature. Desky and Levens met Rosen at the Bucks County Playhouse years ago, when the writer/actor was appearing as Nathan Detroit in a production of “Guys & Dolls.”
The guys found a lifeline in their mutual affection for theater: Desky and Levens, along with Michael Mills (in a production company that preceded the duo’s current venture), eventually backed Rosen’s other play, “The Other Josh Cohen,” before Desky and Levens found the vein of comic riches that is the new Dracula, stripped of the drek which has kept the transplanted Transylvanian encrypted for so long.
Shedding light on the Prince of Darkness, are Desky and Levens playing trick-or-treat with the hallowed horror story?
“From Day One,” says Levens, “we said let’s expand the brand far beyond Halloween, make this play a year-round event.”
Could Dracula be a day-tripper — make that night-tripper — to Bucks County and its playhouse? “We would love that,” says Desky.
Are Desky and Levens wary that the undead one will make draconian claims on their success, spiking a stake in the heart of their hard-earned work?
No, both say, although the toothy off-Broadway icon has already passed judgment on what they hope will be their off-and-running off-Broadway success story. They’re serving up the steak and the sizzle, and how does Dracula consider the production? “Well done,” say the producers tongue-in-chic.
Michael Elkin is a playwright, theater critic and novelist who lives in Abington. He writes occasional columns about theater and the arts.
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