THIS show is more spoof than spooky, sinking its satirical teeth into the gothic gore of Dracula and having a bloody good time with not a drop of blood in sight.

Bram Stokula's The Dracula Spectacula is a batty musical written by a pair of 1970s teachers, John Gardiner and Andrew Parr, in the spirit of Hammer Horror movies and Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone.

Stagecoach artistic director John Cooper first dug Dracula Spectacula out of a grave five years ago and he now revives it with a younger cast, using a company of eight to 12 year olds. Even the technical team of lighting operator James Gibbon and sound and video operator Joe Mills are 14 and 15 respectively.

Cooper's production is suffused with energy from the start as the chorus of Idiots emerges from under the audience seating to sing the lively title song with startling enthusiasm, although clearer enunciation would be welcome.

Off to Wyoming, Pennsylvania, we speed to join the myopic geography class of Miss Nadia Nave (a splendidly nasal, squeaky voiced Jess Haughton-Shaw, in the style of Janet in The Rocky Horror Show). Nave by name, nave by nature, the easily misled school mistress is soon taking her all-American pupils off to Transylvania.

There they shall encounter the hyper-enthusiastic, ever helpful Fraus Heidi and Gretel (Anna Wrigley-Howe and Grace Lancaster with splendidly exaggerated German accents) and Alan Drever-Smith's virtuous, amusingly methodical university boffin Nick Necropholia.

The forces of darkness have a ball. Dominic Platt's blond-rinsed Dracula has Dennis Healey eyebrows and Elvis Presley hips, vamping up the vampire, yet still being scary when it Counts, while Sarah Gibbon's hand-wringing servant Genghis and Cordelia Grierson's mad mother Countess Wraith compete till death for the Most Outrageously Hammy Acting prize - and I mean that in a good way. Cordelia has something of Geri Halliwell in her Spice Girls days about her, such is her determination to catch the eye.

Musical director Dave Clements and choreographer Rosie Pethullis excel in the stand-out routine of Lovely Glublink, and the black-and-white skeletal dancing video sequences by York College media students add to the fangtastical fun.

Updated: 10:55 Thursday, March 17, 2005