Drakula

December 5 was Volunteer Appreciation Day (not just in Latvia around the world) and since I am a volunteer my work gave me a free ticket for the premiere of Drakula, Fresh Blood. I bought a program, hoping that would outline the play and help me understand it, which told the history of Drakula and all of the movies featuring him. So I was expecting a traditional play about Drakula. Or course what I expect to happen and what actually happens to me in Latvia are always vastly different. What I got was a rock musical about Drakula, where he was featured as a rock musician/terrorist living under an authoritarian police state. It was very 1984 but in musical form, which consequently is the most difficult mode of communication in a foreign language so I probably have only a cursory understanding of it all. They had futuristic costumes and there was even a nationalist resistance movement where they combined Nazi like gestures with Latvian folk dancing. One thing I will never get used to, as the prude American that I am, is the naked people on stage. Nearly every play I have seen in Latvia has had naked people...like that is supposed to make it more artistic. All in all it was yet another cultural experience where the ending was a bit unclear. Although I did ask my colleagues what happened at the end and they also had no idea. So it was a successful night at the Latvian theatre where everyone left a bit perplexed but entertained (they even played Like a Virgin by Madonna).