For Alfred

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my Alfred blog here on Tumblr!

So what is this thing about and why am I doing a blog about Alfred? Let’s see. I am a fan of the musical Tanz der Vampire for many years. For those who don’t know, it’s a gorgeous vampire musical, written by Michael Kunze and composed by Jim Steinman, based on the 1967 Roman Polanski film “Fearless Vampire Killers” but going beyond the mere parody aspect of the film to also make some points about the meanings of vampires and dark side to the people. Alfred is the musical’s protagonist, a well-meaning but naïve young man who is the assistant to the vampire researcher Professor Abronsius and follows him to a Transsylvanian village to look for vampires. There Alfred falls in love with the innkeeper’s lovely daughter Sarah, but she is more fascinated by the vampire Count Krolock. When Sarah runs away to the Count’s castle, Alfred and the Professor follow her and Alfred tries to rescue his love, but finds himself up against forces greater than his abilities to be a hero.

I have always loved the character of Alfred, and throughout the years he’s become my favourite character in the musical. I will no doubt do a detailed post about why later - for now, suffice it to say that I find him adorable and endearing, true and human, and far more likeable and relatable than the typical hero guy. Here is someone who truly has to abide by his promise to give away his everything for his love - and does it, for all that he may fail to achieve what he tried. I think it’s sad that he often gets ignored in the fandom in favour of flashier characters like Krolock. Now, it’s true that Alfred doesn’t have a fancy cape and doesn’t give out red boots, and that Krolock has the rockiest songs with lyrics that you can get lots of Gothic lit and subtext kicks out of. But still, Alfred deserves love, and so I’ve created this blog in his honour which will be entirely devoted to all things Alfred. Well, all things Alfred that the author feels like posting about.

As for what I plan to post here - there will no doubt be text entries of varying degrees of length and intelligence about things connected to Alfred. There will be reviews of Tanz der Vampire shows I’ve seen - I tend to write lengthy, detailed reviews especially focusing on Alfred, so those will certainly have a place here. I’ll post photos, videos, links. I’m planning to do some regular type entries to ensure this blog gets updated reasonably often. I’ll do a Photo of the Week, which is what it says: every week I will post some photo, Alfred-related - either Alfred alone or with other characters, or it can also be of Alfred actors in costume outside the show, or in concerts off-costume when performing Alfred songs. I’ll also post a Video of the Month, which will be a YouTube or other video of some Alfred scene/song by an actor that I like. Only once a month because otherwise I’ll run out of videos too soon, given that Alfred is an underappreciated character. Though of course I may post more videos (and more photos, too) whenever I have a reason or just feel like it. And occasionally I may do actor posts, where I introduce an actor who I think has played Alfred particularly well, give some posts/videos/songs from his Alfred and maybe talk about how he plays the character, why I like him in the role and what else he has done. Actor posts will not be that frequent, though, because at present I only have four actors I really like in the role. It could be that if I run out of things to talk about or otherwise want to, I’ll also talk about an Alfred actor’s performance in another musical and compare this role to how he plays Alfred, what differences and what similarities there are.

One final point: as suggested above, I’m actually quite picky about how I like to see Alfred played and which actors I like in the role. This is not to be negative and snobby, but simply because I love the character so much it pains me to see him played in a way that doesn’t do justice to him. However, this blog is for spreading the love and as the title suggests it’s For Alfred, so I don’t want to dwell on anything negative. I’ll do my best to never single out actors I dislike; I will only talk in specifics about the actors I like, and talk about my dislikes only in general terms. It may be that I will sometimes wish to post a review about a performance where I didn’t like the Alfred actor, and in that case I will allow myself to talk about an actor I disliked in specific terms, but I’ll try not to do much of that, I’d much rather gush and spread the joy. It should also be much nicer to readers who may like an actor I don’t like, and perhaps just interpret his acting differently and see different things in it than I do. If I don’t talk about an actor you love, it may be I don’t like him; or it may just be I don’t know him or don’t know enough about him to make a judgement, and you can always assume the latter is the case.

Finally, for those who want to know something about who I am; I won’t say too much publicly, but I am a female above 20 and under 30 from a small northern European country where Tanz der Vampire is not played, and I spend far too much money to go and see this musical and others in Central European countries. I’m particularly charmed by the Hungarian production of the show and the Hungarian Alfreds, so you will hear much about those, but if you don’t know that production it should be no problem; while I think it’s the best production, in principle it’s no different from anything else: the storyline and the script are the same, the contents of the lyrics are the same as far as the difficult art of musical translation allows, and nobody who knows German or other productions should have  difficult following the Hungarian one at any point. So I can’t be referring to something you won’t know if you know the musical.