The Washington Post

The Washington Post is an American newspaper that appears in the book as a participant in the critical afterlife of vampire culture rather than as a fictional institution within a vampire narrative. Its most distinct contribution is a review of Lestat, the musical adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire, where theatre criticism becomes evidence of how a familiar vampire mythology can lose force when transferred to the stage.

Role in the Book

The newspaper is cited in a discussion of vampire musicals, a form introduced as having been almost universally judged unsuccessful. Its review supplies an independent critical voice within that broader account: rather than merely noting that Lestat failed, the book uses the paper’s response to show how the production was understood by contemporary reviewers and why its theatrical treatment of vampire material was considered artistically inadequate.

The Lestat Review

Peter Marks of The Washington Post judged Lestat harshly, writing that “Lestat’s contribution to art and equality is demonstrating that a gay vampire with a two-octave range can be just as dull as a straight one.” The review’s formulation targets two dimensions at once. It acknowledges the musical’s attempt to connect vampire fiction with questions of sexual identity and equality, while insisting that representational significance cannot compensate for dull execution. The joke depends on the contrast between the extraordinary premise of a gay vampire possessing a two-octave singing range and the ordinary disappointment of an unengaging stage character.

The Washington Post’s assessment sits beside Ben Brantley’s New York Times review, which described the musical as “undignified” and “stiff, sub-Heathcliffian,” and criticized its treatment of Armand as “a sustained hissy fit.” Together, the reviews establish that Lestat’s problem was not simply the difficulty of adapting vampire fiction. The production was perceived as tonally awkward, dramatically inert, and unable to convert the sensual, philosophical, and melodramatic energies associated with Anne Rice’s work into effective musical theatre.

Consequences for the Production

The negative reception described through The Washington Post formed part of an almost universally hostile response. Lestat remained on Broadway for only nine weeks before closing, and although an original cast recording was made on 22 May 2006, Elton John later announced that it would not be commercially released. The newspaper’s review therefore belongs to a chain of consequences extending from critical judgment to the production’s brief commercial life and its failure to secure a durable recording legacy.

The account contrasts Lestat with Frank Wildhorn’s Dracula, the Musical. That production also received mostly negative reviews when it moved to Broadway in 2004, despite having sold out its opening night at the La Jolla Playhouse in California in 2001. After substantial revision for Europe, however, Wildhorn’s show became a major international success. This comparison makes The Washington Post’s review part of a larger distinction between a vampire musical that could not survive its critical and commercial reception and one whose later revisions found a more effective theatrical form.

Critical and Cultural Significance

The newspaper’s intervention is significant because it refuses to treat the presence of queer imagery as automatically artistically or politically progressive. The review recognizes Lestat’s claim to “art and equality,” yet measures that claim against the basic theatrical demand for vitality. In this sense, The Washington Post represents criticism as a form of cultural testing: vampire identity, vocal spectacle, and adaptation prestige may attract attention, but they do not by themselves create compelling drama.

Its appearance also broadens the book’s account of vampire history beyond folklore, film, and fiction. Elsewhere, institutions regulate vampire imagery through censorship: the British Board of Film Censors prevented A Fool There Was from receiving an official United Kingdom release because of its illicit sexual relationship; Florence Balcombe’s copyright action led courts to order the destruction of copies of Nosferatu; and the Hays Code forced cuts to the 1936 reissue of Dracula, including the Count’s death groans and a warning that vampires might be real. The Washington Post represents a different kind of institutional power. It does not ban, alter, or destroy vampire material; it evaluates the finished work in public, helping determine whether an adaptation will be remembered as significant, embarrassing, or simply dull.