The Count Who Conquered Seoul
Here is a theatrical paradox worth savouring. Frank Wildhorn‘s Dracula flopped on Broadway, yet in Seoul it is a blockbuster that sells out season after season. In October 2026 in Seoul, a day after M. Butterfly and Elisabeth, I crossed the city to LG Arts Center Seoul in Magok to find out why.
A confession first. When I booked, I was certain this was a Vienna show. Fresh from Elisabeth, I assumed the Gothic vampire romance on the same trip was another Vereinigte Bühnen Wien export. I was mixing it up with Tanz der Vampire, Vienna’s own vampire hit from 1997, with music by Jim Steinman, lyrics by Michael Kunze and direction by Roman Polanski. Wildhorn’s Dracula is American by birth: it began at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2001 and opened on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre on August 19, 2004.
My mix-up was not entirely misplaced, though, because Europe is where this show was rescued. Broadway closed it on January 2, 2005, after just 157 performances. Within months Wildhorn had reworked the score with six new songs for Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland, which opened on April 23, 2005. That production sold out, with a 46-piece orchestra. Austria’s Graz Summer Festival followed in 2007. German-language stages have kept coming back to it ever since, from a filmed production in Ulm to Vienna in 2022 and a 2026 tour of Germany and Austria. European audiences embraced what New York dismissed, much as they did with Tanz der Vampire, another Broadway flop. Seoul, it turns out, simply joined a European love affair already in progress.
The show began at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 2001 and reached Broadway in 2004. It went on to productions in Sweden, Austria, the UK, Canada and Japan. Korea’s version, produced by OD Company’s Shin Choon-soo, opened in 2014 with director David Swan and music director Won Mi-sol, the team behind Korea’s legendary Jekyll & Hyde. That first run hit 92% occupancy at the Seoul Arts Center Opera Theater.
This is the sixth Korean season, two years after the 10th-anniversary run. It plays the LG Signature Hall until October 18. Four Counts rotate: Shin Sung-rok, Kim Junsu, Jeon Dong-seok and newcomer Go Eun-sung. Cho Jung-eun, Park Ji-yeon and Kim Hwan-hee share Mina. My own matinee paired Shin Sung-rok‘s Count with Kim Hwan-hee‘s Mina, with Kang Tae-eul as Van Helsing, Jin Tae-hwa as Jonathan, Lee Ye-eun as Lucy and Jo Sung-rin as Renfield.
Crucially, Seoul’s Dracula is a non-replica production. Only the script and music came from Broadway; the design, direction and choreography were created in Korea. That difference, I suspect, is the whole story. Let’s go to Transylvania.
Bram Stoker, Rewritten as a Love Story
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel gave us the monster. This musical gives us the lover. Seoul’s version recasts the Count as a tragic romantic who has loved one woman for more than 400 years, and who finds her again in Mina Murray. Van Helsing gains depth too. In the Korean production he has a backstory involving his wife, added by David Swan in workshops.
The show runs like this, following the scene list in the Seoul programme, with notes from the licensed show’s synopsis.
Act One
- “The Master’s Song” – in the asylum, Renfield, Dracula’s devoted servant, sets the tone.
- “Jonathan’s Arrival” and “Solitary Man” – Jonathan reaches the castle, and the Count reveals his loneliness.
- “Whitby Bay” – the Count glimpses Mina, the woman he has waited centuries for.
- “Forever Young” and “Fresh Blood” – the vampire brides tempt Jonathan, and the Count feeds and grows young.
- “The Master’s Song” and “Last Man Standing” – at the asylum, Van Helsing makes his entrance and vows to hunt the vampire.
- “How Do You Choose” – in a Whitby garden, Lucy weighs her suitors Jack, Quincey and Arthur.
- “The Mist” – by night, Dracula comes for Lucy.
- “She”, “At Last” and “A Perfect Life / Loving You Keeps Me Alive” – at the station, Dracula, Mina and Jonathan pull in three directions.
- “Weddings” – Mina marries Jonathan, and Lucy marries Arthur.
- “The Invitation” and “Nosferatu” – Dracula returns to Lucy, and Van Helsing names the threat.
- “Lucy’s Funeral” and “Life After Life” – Lucy rises from the grave as the act ends.
Act Two
- “Lucy with Child” and “Undead One” – in the graveyard, the hunters destroy the vampire Lucy.
- “Please Don’t Make Me Love You” – Mina fights her pull towards the Count.
- “The Master’s Song” (reprise) and “If I Had Wings” – the asylum again, and Mina’s solo.
- “Mina’s Seduction” and “It’s Over” – the Count claims Mina, and the hunters confront him.
- “You Have My Word” and “Before the Summer Ends” – the men swear an oath, and Mina and Jonathan share a tender duet.
- “Train Sequence” and “Deep in the Darkest Night” – the hunters prepare to follow the Count home.
- “The Longer I Live” – Dracula doubts his own existence.
- “Quincey’s Death”, “At Last” and “Finale” – in the castle courtyard, Mina’s love becomes the Count’s release and his end.
Wildhorn’s Second Home
Frank Wildhorn wrote the score, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton. Wildhorn has a special relationship with Korean audiences. Jekyll & Hyde, The Count of Monte Cristo and Death Note made him a household name here, and Korea even commissioned an original musical from him, The Man Who Laughs. The Korean press calls him the composer Koreans love, and fans like to say that every number in Dracula is a killer number.
The score blends lush romantic balladry with hard rock. Fresh Blood is the calling card: the withered Count regains his youth through Jonathan in a burst of dynamic, explosive energy. Before the 2014 premiere, Korean coverage pitched it as Dracula‘s answer to “This Is the Moment”. Loving You Keeps Me Alive is the great love duet, Please Don’t Make Me Love You Mina’s torn confession, and The Longer I Live the Count’s moment of self-doubt.
The Korean version is not simply the Broadway score translated. Three songs not heard on Broadway were added. They include She, in which Dracula confesses his fate, and Last Man Standing, Van Helsing’s statement of resolve. Those additions explain part of the show’s Korean success: they give the Count a clearer emotional arc and Van Helsing a real reason to hate him.
Music director Won Mi-sol has shaped the Korean sound since the 2014 premiere. Expect a big, sweeping, unapologetically melodramatic show, rock-driven in the Gothic set pieces and achingly lyrical in the love scenes. That is exactly what Seoul audiences buy tickets for, and the singing I heard was amazing from top to bottom.
Four Turntables and Twenty Pillars
If Broadway’s Dracula is remembered at all, it is for a production that never quite found its footing. Seoul’s answer was to throw the design out and start again. OD Company kept the script and the score and reinvented everything else: set, direction and choreography.
The centrepiece is the machinery. Set designer Oh Pil-young built the stage on four independently moving turntables, which create spaces and backdrops as they rotate. Producer Shin Choon-soo insisted at the 2014 press call that this was an original production, distinct from what came before. It was the first quadruple turntable used in Korea. Add twenty giant intersecting pillars and you get a stage that is constantly rebuilding itself around the actors.
The effect is cinematic, and in the theatre the marriage of moving stage and video projection was nothing short of a masterpiece. Castle corridors become Whitby clifftops become London drawing rooms without a pause, and the restless motion lends a sense of fate closing in. One reviewer this season described a stage that never stops moving and emotions that never stop exploding. David Swan directs and choreographs; his movement gives the vampire brides and the Count’s seductions their sinuous, erotic edge.
The move to LG Arts Center Seoul’s LG Signature Hall matters, too. Kim Junsu once joked that the set looked too big even for Charlotte Theater. This modern house finally gives the machine room to breathe. And a small detail for repeat visitors: Kim Junsu has dropped his trademark red hair this season.
Panned in New York, Adored in Seoul
On Broadway in 2004, Dracula was savaged by the New York critics and closed after a short run. Few shows have had a more dramatic second life. In Korea it has been a reliable box-office champion since 2014, topping ticket rankings at every opening. This season it sat among the top three on NOL Ticket’s weekly musical chart, with more than 2,200 users saving it to their wish lists.
This season’s reviews are admiring, with one recurring caveat. Financial News was won over the moment Lee Areumsol‘s Lucy sang of fear and desire as if lost in fog. It praised Jeon Dong-seok, nicknamed the “Dracula master,” for a voice that moves between sweetness and force, and read the show as the Count’s own coming-of-age story.
Bravo My Life was more measured. It noted that the plot is often called somewhat childish, but credited Wildhorn’s grand yet lyrical score with lifting the material. It also found a deeper maturity in Kim Junsu’s Count, now that the singer has turned forty.
That split is the honest verdict on Dracula. Nobody comes for subtle storytelling. People come for the voices, the machinery and the sheer romantic swoon, and on those terms the Korean production delivers more than any version I know of.
Sink Your Teeth In
Three shows in two days, and Dracula was simply amazing, and the purest spectacle of the lot. Where M. Butterfly made me think and Elisabeth made me reflect on three decades of theatregoing, this one simply swept me away. It is tamer than Elisabeth, with less of that show’s dark daring. But the staging and video projection are a masterpiece, and the singing was glorious from first note to last.
The story is thin and the dialogue can creak. But four turntables, twenty pillars and a cast that sings Wildhorn at full throttle make a compelling case that sometimes more really is more. Korea took a Broadway flop and turned it into a signature title. That alone is reason enough to see it.
Hurry, though. The curtain falls for good on October 18.
Rating: 5 out of 5 bats. LG Signature Hall, LG Arts Center Seoul (Magoknaru Station), until October 18, 2026. About 165 minutes including a 20-minute interval; ages 14 and up.
Also from Seoul in October 2026: Elisabeth in Seoul: Death Dances Again, and M. Butterfly Takes Flight as a Musical.
— References —
LG Arts Center Seoul: Dracula • The Musical: 2026 casting • The Musical: 2014 press call • The Musical: 2014 premiere announcement • The Musical: 2014 music videos • Financial News: added songs • Financial News: cast review • Bravo My Life: 2026 review • Hangyo: non-replica design • Sports Kyunghyang: 2014 premiere • Tenasia: Wildhorn and Fresh Blood • Xports News: Kim Junsu interview • MTI: synopsis • MTI: show history • Community News: St. Gallen revision • Filmed on Stage: Ulm production • Wikipedia: production history • NOL Ticket: run details
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