Jason Jamerson

Oregon Cabaret Theatre runs Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors in the fall of its 41st season. The play by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen puts five actors through more than a dozen roles in ninety minutes. The comedy runs on speed. Quick changes, sudden entrances, and abrupt shifts of location from Transylvania to the English countryside to London.

The design answers that demand with a single Gothic unit. Two levels, a central arch, flanking doors, and a gallery above. Every opening is a working entrance, which gives the cast the exit paths a quick-change farce requires without a scene change to slow the pace.

Projection surfaces are built into the architecture rather than hung behind it. The panels flanking the structure and the fills within the arches carry the location shifts. Scenery stays fixed and light does the traveling, which is how a ninety-minute romp crosses a continent without stopping.

The palette runs deep purple and oxblood against warm lamplight. Gothic enough to read as a horror set on first look, saturated enough to signal the comedy underneath.

The production runs September through November 2026. Details at oregoncabaret.com.