More research material
As belatedly promised to @fufferrrrrrr, here's some more stuff @ozymegdias and I unearthed during the process of research for our defunct podcast. These scripts, in my opinion, most effectively chronicle the move from European success to American failed experiment that was the trajectory from Tanz der Vampire to Dance of the Vampires.
(They're also really effective for seeing what demo or "final" - to the extent anything about DOTV can be considered canon - lyrics actually were, for those who've never been able or thought to look them up.)
Tanz
It would be unfair to share DOTV's shortcomings without shining a light on the European version and why those involved in America felt they could have such a free hand revising it in the first place.
As is now well-known, in addition to Jim Steinman basically being a hands-off composer whose themes were used piecemeal by the librettist with help from the music supervisor, Michael Kunze drafted what amounted to a placeholder English version so that Steinman and Roman Polanski, neither of whom spoke German, would have a basic idea of how the show worked, a Ur-text that, it should be noted, he did not at all feel beholden to in developing the actual German rendition, as even the most rudimentary comparison would show.
This, I suspect, is a variant of that early English version, sourced from Kunze himself. As evidence, a counterpoint by Krolock not heard in the final version of "Nie geseh'n" (but present in a documentary about the making of the original Vienna production) is still present in the script; "Du bist wirklich sehr nett" is not written at all except for Alfred's final verse; Krolock's second verse (starting "Ich geb dir was dir fehlt...") for "Einladung zum Ball" is not yet written; what lyrics are present for "Stärker als wir sind" and "Das gebet," the latter of which had no counterpoint from Sarah and Krolock at the time, appear to be direct-translation German-to-English rather than written with any feeling whatsoever for the music (indeed, I strongly suspect this was added to this older document at a later date); the a cappella ending to "Carpe Noctem" is missing; and more.
My Two Cents: If you've already heard Kunze's English lyrics in demo form for his other shows, then you have some idea of the quality of writing you'll find in this document. It ain't pretty, folks. At most, it serves as a clue for a starting point. To me, it's clear why Jim felt he could monkey around with it in the transition to the English stage, which in turn paved the way for more unfortunate tomfoolery.
DOTV
The following scripts reflect various phases of DOTV's development. What they all have in common, at least in my opinion, is that while they may not have much to do with Tanz (increasingly so after the 2001 drafts), each of them, with the possible exception of the last two, has individual moments of brilliance that show what could have been if everyone had their head screwed on tight, involved Kunze from the beginning, and didn't fall under the bus that was the tug of war for creative control between Steinman and Michael Crawford.
I wish we had a copy of the script for the April 2001 reading, which starred Steve Barton and, though once purported by Jim's longtime assistant to be essentially the German version in English, already had significant departures from the original according to nearly everyone else involved that I had the pleasure of speaking with. While it may not be a direct comparison to Tanz, our interviews suggested that this was the last time in the project when everyone involved was completely aligned and on the same page. It'd be fascinating to see what that looked like.
Where we pick up the trail is with this draft, dated May 10, 2001. I call this the "workshop" draft, because a news announcement on Jim Steinman's website following the initial DOTV reading indicated that a workshop production would be staged in "mid-May" for theater owners. Already present are the new prologue sequence ("Angels Arise" and "God Has Left the Building" are in), new songs ("Is Nothing Sacred" appears in Act II as in later drafts, and unheard material such as "The Red Badge of Love" appears mainly to make up for all the shifting of material to different slots than in the German version), and tons of "funny" dialogue. (One may argue the final version at least made more of an effort to be consistent; the humor in this early script runs an uneven gamut from Beatles references to genitalia jokes to potty humor and all points between.) Alongside all of this, however, are huge sections of the original European score, virtually unchanged barring the occasional alteration of a word or phrase. (You'll recognize many an amended lyric from the 1997 draft in particular.) Unfortunately, some pages (the entirety of "Carpe Noctem") are missing, but this is still a fairly complete look at the earliest currently available version of the show.
We then fast-forward several months to the most commonly circulated draft, dated August 11, 2001, a month after Crawford's hiring was announced and one month to the day before the other big disaster that affected the show's pre-production. The mix of humor and score is more consistent, though some of the punchlines that are holdovers from the May script are blunted by being cut during rewrites. Overall, barring such anomalies as early draft lyrics for a much more dramatic "Invitation to the Ball" sequence, "Carpe Noctem" now closing Act I in a bizarre hybrid with part of the former Act I finale, and Krolock shape-shifting into an alien monster during the ball sequence (I shit you not), this is not an altogether terrible version of the show, and indeed widely regarded as the best version of DOTV that ever existed. This is a complete copy, no pages missing.
In February 2002, following the 9/11-related postponement, three new producing partners joined the show, and the funding began to pour in, centered on Crawford's involvement. From around that time comes this draft, dated February 6, 2002. According to cast member Ray McLeod, this script (or something like it) is what they entered rehearsals with, and it changed daily from there on out. The "UK demos" (so-called because they were recorded by British singers with heavy accents, two of whom have been identified as music supervisor Michael Reed and vocalist Anne Skates) can be dated to approximately this point, judging by the similarities of the main songs in this draft, lyrically speaking, to the content of the demos. (The lyrics to "Eternity" seem to have been obliterated by the photocopying process, but otherwise, the draft is complete.) By now, more of the final structure of the American version is in place, but the creative team is still trying to figure out how to make the humor work. Judging by a couple of scenes here, it would seem they turned back to the source film for possible clues.
Fast-forward several months to what I call the "previews" draft, with a title page date of August 16, 2002, and various revision dates throughout. Several pages are missing; this appears to be a copy created for the stage manager's use, as modifications were made during previews. This script was sourced from an overenthusiastic DOTV fan (for such species exist, strange but true) who went back through the script and wrote down everything they could remember from a bootleg to better reflect the final version, crossing out lines, writing in whole paragraphs, and generally making a mess of things. Working with my limited MS Paint skills, barring the strike-outs no one could fix, I did my best to clean it up in the initial scan. Probably still missed a few things though.
Last and least, as The Producers (the much funnier show DOTV aimed to imitate) might put it, courtesy of the NYPL's theatre collection (annotated for use when the show was filmed on the closing night by the Theatre On Film and Tape Archive), here is the final script for DOTV. Ironically, given how different Tanz fans feel DOTV is, it was interesting to emerge from reading this script with the (no doubt minority) opinion that a) while a bad adaptation, DOTV is nevertheless an adaptation and a surprising amount of it still resembles the original, if a more brash, crass version at times, and b) comparison to earlier drafts reveals what might've been a better choice, etc.
With the benefit of hindsight, I once successfully crafted a more faithful "fan edit" from all of these drafts, of which it can be said, "Okay, it's closer to Tanz if you squint, and it's effective proof of concept that they didn't need to change nearly as much as they did." I find it telling how easy it was to create something that, at very least, doesn't stray too far while being its own animal, proving that if anyone involved had tried, DOTV need not have landed so far afield. (There's an older version of it archived on this blog; if someone tempts me with enough notes, I might share a more polished version.)
For now, enjoy your reading. After all, a good nightmare comes so rarely...
