Whether Bram Stoke conjured up Dracula from a nightmare, the historical account of Vlad the Impaler from modern day Romania, or Irish myth, he created a creature both terrible and legendary that has never passed from the human imagination.

And although there have been several iterations of the vampire over the years, Classical Theatre Company starts with the source material — Stoker's 1897 novel — with an adaptation by playwright Chris Iannacone, to depict this classic horror tale.

Englishman Jonathan Harker (Kyle Clark) will again travel to meet with Count Dracula (Spencer Plachy) in his castle in Transylvania. where he will be disturbed by mysterious surroundings, howling wolves and the Count himself who has a strange blood fixation. Trapped in the castle, Harker learns Dracula has gone ahead of him to England where he in short order, he goes about killing other victims and in some cases, making them vampires. His victims include Lucy (Eva Olivia Catanzariti) and Harker's fiancée Mina (Elissa Cuellar).

Blake Weir, a well-known Houston actor (R.U.R. at Classical, The Wickhams at Main Street) and anime voice artist, is directing after assistant directing The School for Scandal and The War of the Worlds for Classical. He is also a longtime theater teacher and director at the high school level and decided he could "be a better director for my students if I work with professionals as well."

Actually he'd seen the idea for doing Dracula drawn on a white board by Iannacone some years ago and was immediately drawn to it. "I started seeing images in my head about how I wanted to do it.

"I started to realize to myself, blood sucking vampires don't exist in the real world, however, people who suck life out of others do. Especially for their own gain," Weir said. "I look at this story and how many analogies can be compared to morality. This is a very classic tale, told from an old age perspective, however, still seems really real and fresh.  I told [Artistic Director John Johnston'] that if he would give me the opportunity I would obsess over it and really try hard."

Others in the cast  include David Akinwande as Seward, Greg Dean as Van Helsing, Jonathan Robinson as Renfield and the three Wierd Disters (Jasmine Christyne, Luke Fedell and Maggie Maxwell.)

Weir decided early on that he didn't want it to be a melodrama. "I wanted to stay away from tropes. I wanted to think about the time period. What the history was like at the time and make it real from our lens now in the modern era.

"It's become what we believe will be a terrifying show."

Stoker's novel goes on and on sometimes, Weir said. The 1924 play that was made of it included what Weir terms "theatery" moments that to his way of thinking "didn't really land true."

As far as Weir is concerned, Dracula is not in any way a sympathetic figure. "There are people that truly find joy in malicious intent and gaming off of that. I look at Dracula. there are moments that he enjoys what he is doing. He's free to do it and no one can stop him."

"It is a violent show. The way we have staged it currently and what we have planned, there will be special effects. The way I intend it to be is brutal because he is brutal. We've been calling it often a living nightmare," Weir said.

One thing Weir said he wanted to do was desexualize the play. "There were a lot of sexual tropes the women were often overly sexualized. I wanted to really remove that and treat them with more respect and give them more groundedness. They have more depth and you feel more for them. And really lifting Mina up as the hero of the story."

"I know a lot of people love the classic tale. I'm not a purist. What you will see is a collaboration of artists telling the scariest version of Dracula we possibly can."

Performances are scheduled for October 10-26 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays and 7:30 p.m. Monday, October 21 at The DeLuxe Theater, 3303 Lyons. For more information, call 713-963-9665 or visit classicaltheatre.org. $10-$30.