Fic Rec: "Stronger than we are"

And now for something not-so-totally different for this blog: rather than just posting my own fan fiction, I'm going to recommend someone else's. Author Caranya (who has offered some very kind reviews of my own work) is in the middle of posting a Northanger Abbey story called "Stronger than we are." It's a bit of leftover Halloween fun for the Morlands and Tilneys (and Thorpes!) set in Transylvania. As the blurb states:

What if Catherine and James Morland didn't meet the adventure of their lives in the relative safety of Bath and instead found it in the midst of wintery Transylvania? And what if vampires were really, truly, absolutely real? The slightly chaotic Tanz der Vampire/Northanger Abbey Mash-Up nobody asked for, but that got delivered anyway.

I'm enjoying the story so far, as it has spot on characterization for our leads, and is a rare alternate universe outing for this often overlooked corner of Jane Austen fandom. Also, rather than treat the whole thing as a horror joke, the author looks to be playing the thing "straight," with humor arising from the situation naturally rather than mawkishly. I'm already looking forward to how the vampire angle will play out for this story, especially how much traditional horror lore may be subverted or embraced.

I learned from a comment exchange that the author's first language is German, and became curious about the crossover aspect of this fiction Tanz der Vampire, or in English Dance of the Vampires.

Turns out it's a '90's era musical based on 1967 German-language horror parody film; rather like how Little Shop of Horrors or Young Frankenstein the musical are based on movies of the same name. Evidently it's been a big hit in Europe and overseas, but not so much on Broadyway, where it flopped after a very short run. I found the following YouTube medley that looks like it came from a German news broadcast.

While I grinned at the opening polka (which is sadly missing from most Broadway librettos), and couldn't help but smirk at the leading man's ballad sung in German (poor German, even when it's tenderly sung it sounds harsh), I really perked up at the power duet between the vampire and female lead. It sounded very much like "Total Eclipse of the Heart," and it turns out I wasn't just hearing things: according to the Wikipedia page, the show's reoccurring theme "Total Darkness" is an explicit callback to that '80s chart topper, with much of the remaining score including deliberate homages to other pop songs. I can only assume the presentation suffers some in translation, since otherwise this type of campy rock musical feels like exactly the kind of thing audiences would eat up here in the US.

In fact, as I looked through clips and read up on this show, I realized I may actually have experienced an echo of it during my own theatre school days. I remember seeing black show T-shirts with lyrics from "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on the back during my morning dance class, with the name of an unfamiliar show underneath. It was a student-led piece performed the year before I entered college, and one I had assumed was either written by them or some other kind of indie/underground show about vampires. Now I wonder if it was actually a version of this very story! As the Disney ride says, it's a small world after all.

While "Stronger than we are" is still unfolding, I'm grateful to the story for introducing me to this very intriguing and previously unknown facet of musical theatre history. It's a very worthy successor to The Mysteries of Udolpho for inspiring potentially perilous situations (of both the real and imagine variety) for the characters of Northanger Abbey. Plus, we can all agree that in any version of the story, Catherine Morland would be a major fan.