A 'Dracula' strong and scary in its details

If anyone can get you - yet again - to sink your teeth into

Dracula

, it's actor Christopher Patrick Mullen. This is no simple task: On stage, the vampire story, like Dracula himself, stubbornly refuses to die despite several versions that (also like Dracula) appear stillborn as soon as the lights go up on them.

Mullen makes a bloody fine Dracula. He also makes an eerie asylum patient who feasts on the blood of insects and spiders, a well-meaning doctor, a gun-toting Texan, and an ever-more-imperiled real estate agent named Jonathan Harker in

Dracula: The Journal of Jonathan Harker

. It's the first offering of this summer's Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, which opened Friday in Center Valley, near Quakertown.

Mullen plays everyone in what is essentially a vigorous two-act monologue that would pummel a lesser actor. He never even comes close to going down for the count, or maybe The Count. In retelling the horror story of the vamp and his Transylvanian camp - and this is nothing if not a evening-long campfire tale - Mullen moves constantly around and through Bob Phillips' set of old furnishings.

Philadelphia theater artist Matt Pfeiffer, who has worked with the festival for years, makes his mainstage directing debut here, blocking the play with a delicious sense of fright and an eye for movement that make this one-man

Dracula

more than simple storytelling. Eric T. Haugen lights the action for suspense, and Matthew Given's sound design becomes its own sort of character.

And yes, there are cliches aplenty: fog from nowhere, howling wolves, storms that lack all meteoro-logic, a Dracula who constantly smacks the furniture to make a point. But, hey, this is a vampire tale - you have to take the trite with the fright.

Jim Helsinger's adaptation is often compelling but goes glaringly overboard. Only the Bavarian Alps have more precipices than the ones in Helsinger's script - how many of them can Mullen look down on before we begin to think,

yeah, deep chasm, very scary, uh-huh

?

Act One, in which we're transported to Dracula's castle, becomes a cat-and-mouse game between Harker, who is arranging Dracula's real estate papers, and the Count, who's holding Harker prisoner. But wait! There's a chance to escape! But no! There's not! Wait!-no!-wait!-no! It goes on.

The story of Dracula is by now so familiar that the only reason to retell it is the ornamentation; the devil is all in its details. Helsinger's detail overload becomes wearisome, but whenever that happens Mullen eventually grabs your attention - a clear triumph of performance over content - in his uncanny way. Don't worry about bringing a crucifix to ward him off; DeSales University, the Shakespeare festival's home, is a Catholic university and well supplied. Still, to be sure, order a pre-theater meal with plenty of garlic.

Through June 29 at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, DeSales University, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley. Tickets: $29-$46. Information: 610-282-9455 or

» READ MORE: www.pashakespeare.org

.