That tall, skinny dude in black is back. No, not Johnny Cash. The one with the long teeth and insatiable thirst for the life force.

Count Dracula (Jeffrey James Lippold) and his frolicking female vampire trio inhabit that dingy Transylvanian castle through Feb. 24 at Coronado Playhouse, directed by James Gary Byrd.

John Mattera’s adaptation plays down the gore, changes the identity of the victim who dies and only suggests the gruesome death of the count. It also minimizes the gothic eroticism of the original.

In return, it offers original atmospheric music by local composer Eric Scot Frydler and adds the Shakespearean comic relief of two butlers and Mr. Renfield (Charley Miller), inmate in Dr. Seward’s asylum, making it a rather jollier evening than one might expect.

When Jonathan Harker (Michael Oravec) enters Castle Dracula to discuss a real estate deal, he is creeped out immediately by the count’s frightening demeanor and his insistence on putting off the business discussion until the next night, too late for Harker to catch the train back.

But of course we know why: The count has seen and become rather too familiar with a photo of Jonathan’s fiancée, Lucy (Allison Willliams), and is plotting to make her his bride. When the count announces his decision to move to London, Jonathan quips, “You can’t expect me to believe you’re moving to England lock, stock and barrel just to partake of English food!”

“Your fiancée bears a striking resemblance to woman I was to marry many years ago. She was taken from me. Now I have found her again,” the count responds ominously.

When the scene shifts to London, we meet Lucy’s parents, Martha (Allison MacDonald) and Henry Westenra (Timothy Paul Evans), and their hilariously drunken butler, Charles (Ivan Harrison, who table-hopped pre-show in a lovely black frock).

Soon the Westenras begin to wonder why Lucy looks so pale and keeps talking about the new neighbor in the abandoned Carfax mansion nearby and not about Jonathan and her upcoming wedding. They call in Dr. Seward (David O’Neal), who consults Dutch vampire authority Professor Van Helsing (Michael Gardner), and the situation goes from bad to worse.

Dracula is a gothic fantasy calling up our deepest fears and erotic longings, and playing down that fact makes Lucy seem more victimized than irresistibly drawn to her undead suitor (and it’s the latter that creates the tension and makes us examine our own dark desires).

Nonetheless, the wonderful comic stylings of Harrison and Miller, Barbara Hart’s terrific costumes and a Lippold’s genuinely scary demeanor work on a different level.

This production, slated to go on stage last fall, was postponed by a flood that closed the theater. But the producers managed to keep the capable cast together for five months, except for the remarkable Gardner (who took the role on 24-hours notice).

Dracula provides a jolly good evening in the theater.

Dracula plays through Feb. 24 at Coronado Playhouse. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 6:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 435-4856 or visit www.coronadoplayhouse.com.

The tastelessness of singing and dancing Nazis in Mel Brooks’ Springtime for Hitler has an updated counterpart in Julien Nitzberg and Roger Neill’s The Beastly Bombing, or A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love, playing an open-ended run at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood.

Many of today’s favorite targets are cast in this Gilbert and Sullivanesque operetta: al-Qaida terrorists, skinheads, druggies (and presidential daughters), Jews, a pedophile priest, a Saudi-loving U.S. President and Jesus. You’re well advised to stay away if you can’t stomach any more ragging on the above – but you’ll miss some very funny stuff if you do.

In Plot A, al-Qaida terrorists Abdul (Andrew Ableson) and Khalid (Ben Daughtrey) try to give each other the great honor of blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge, complete with its ticket to paradise and those 72 virgins in return. Simultaneously, skinheads Frank (Aaron Matijasic) and Patrick (Jacob Sidney) plot the same action, of course without the promise of heavenly rewards.

The chosen pair of terrorists meet on the bridge (“What are you doing here?”), sing the jaunty “A Delightful Little Bomb” (“It’s best to kill some people so everyone knows they voted wrong”), and wrestle a bit, resulting in the explosives falling harmlessly into the drink.

When the cops get a whiff of the plan, a chase initiates and the guys duck into a Brooklyn clothing store for new duds. It just happens that this place is owned by a Hasidic Jew, who sells everybody a yarmulke so they can all sing “I Hate Jews” (the Hasid hates secular Jews: “I think it’s vile when they act like Gentiles”).

Meanwhile, over in Plot B, giddy presidential daughters Clarissa (Kate Feld) and Elyssa (Katie Coleman) arrive in New York for the first time. Their first stop? The friendly dope peddler, where they acquire a rainbow assortment of attitude enhancers to the hilarious strains of “Three Little Maids” – like the song titled, “We Like Mushrooms.”

Eventually, all six will share both a jail cell and tablets, which they assume to be speed from the girls’ very private stash. It’s actually Ecstasy, which leads to a Shakespearean twist where love and inappropriate couplings break out across cultural, religious and sexual boundaries. Their new cellmate, a priest who likes little boys (Curt Bonnem), agrees to marry them.

That’s the breathless and hilarious first act, which ends when a third party blows up the bridge. Somebody tells President Dodgeson (Jesse Merlin) his daughters have escaped rehab, pushing him into a state of paralysis under the desk. All this to the strains of “The Bravest President.”

The second act bogs down badly, concentrating on the inept president (talk about old jokes) and his predictable response to the bridge bombing: spinning a globe, closing his eyes, pointing to Chad (“Just the sound of it makes me mad”).

The songs aren’t as good, the plot gets a bit flabby and the whole seems to drag a bit, ending in a silly but not especially funny way.

But that first act is great fun. My advice is to take in the first act, then go to dinner at the Electric Lotus – a terrific Indian restaurant nearby.

The Beastly Bombing, or A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love plays an open-ended run at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood. Shows Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. For tickets, call (800) 595-4TIX or visit www.steveallentheater.com.

Noel Coward loved to expose the upper class behaving badly, and he did it better and more amusingly than most.

In Hay Fever, he shows us the Bliss family – David (Charlie Riendeau), Judith (Dagmar K. Fields) and their adult children Simon (Thomas Hall) and Sorel (Aimee Janelle Nelson), gathering in the country house for the weekend. Each has invited a guest, but not informed the others, so that surprises abound and sleeping accommodations may be problematic.

Hay Fever plays through Feb. 18 at Moonlight Stage Productions’ Avo Playhouse in Vista, directed by Eric Bishop.

Retired actress Judith loves to wring every bit of drama out of every situation, or even to make it up if there is none. She is, in fact, planning a stage comeback. She has invited the young and sporty Sandy Tyrell for the weekend. David, a romantic novelist, spends most of his time in his study writing, but he has invited Jackie (Summer Spiro), “a sweet (and young) flapper.” Simon, an artist manqué who apparently gets his overdramatic sense from his mother, has invited the terribly fashionable Myra (Terri Park), whom Judith calls “a self-conscious vampire who goes around using sex as some sort of shrimping net.” And Sorel’s guest is diplomat Richard (Sean Vernon).

The Bliss family specializes in bad behavior – not for gain but for the sheer fun of it, and they spend most of the play terrorizing their guests with verbal abuse punctuated with exaggerated and phony emotional displays, until finally the four of them escape this appalling quartet.

Production values are high here – Marty Burnett’s set is terrific, Roslyn Lehman’s costumes are spectacular and Paul Canaletti’s lighting design excellent.

The actors take this play, described by Coward himself as “a dubious trifle,” joyously and massively over the top. Hall in particular emotes all over the place in rather exhausting fashion.

But Coward never wrote serious plays, never had a message. He wanted to entertain, and that he does with Hay Fever.

Hay Fever plays through Feb. 18 at Moonlight Stage Productions’ Avo Playhouse in Vista. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (760) 724-2110 or visit www.vistixonline.com.