As you enter the Andrews Theatre, the ceiling is dripping with candles and the seats are bathed in blood-red lighting. Eerie sounds – can we call it music? – fill the air, punctuated by distant howlings.

The mood is set for “Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors,” the Irish Classical Theatre Company’s season opener and the Buffalo stage debut of ICTC’s new artistic director, Keelie Sheridan. 

Part slapstick, part horror schtick, part bromance, farce and comic romance, this show is to die for. 

Playwrights Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen have made no bones about piping fresh blood into Bram Stoker’s classic thriller. It looks like Monty Python, Mel Brooks (shades of Frau Blucher) and Mary Shelley among the many donors. 

The result is an audacious, anachronistic rewrite that puts the “vamp” in vampire. The hot young Transylvanian count prances in like a Chippendale dancer, flexing his well-sculpted torso to any and all.

Jorge Luna (Sheridan’s real-life husband) as Dracula plays the undead monster with such lively brio, it’s easy to fall under his spell. Confident and charismatic, nothing phases him. Except for that garlic from the farmers’ market.

His hapless foil is Johnathan Harker, the mild-mannered property agent whose fiance, Lucy, has caught Dracula’s eye. Brendon Didio, so wonderful last season as four Watsons at Road Less Traveled, wows us again in another “transformational” performance. 

Sheridan shines as the adventuresome Lucy, a young woman who doesn’t lack for suitors but who yearns for something else, something more – shall we say — spirited. But as lovely as Lucy is, she’s briefly upstaged by her un-suitored sister, Mina, who, beneath her curly wig, is the versatile Daniel Lendzian in a hoop skirt and bloomers. 

(Just like with Clark Kent and Superman, you’ll never see Mina in the same room with the formidable Jean Valjean Helsing, a woman vampire hunter who has a strong resemblance to Lendzian.) 

The sisters are under the wing of their psychiatrist father, Dr. Westfeldt – a tweedy Charmagne Chi, who also serves as a doomed ship’s captain and the wild-haired, bug-eating Renfield. It must be controlled chaos backstage when Chi’s doing her back-and-forth costume changes.

And what costumes! Cassie Cameron has gone above and beyond with the Victorian era outfits and fright night wigs, giving the whole cast looks to die for. 

They deserve to look good, because they are. Director Chris Kelly knows he found a rich vein when he got this cast, and he doesn’t let a drop of their comic chops go to waste. The players use designer David Butler’s set like it’s a romper room (which fits the B&W cartoony style that Butler borrowed from Edward Gorey, of the PBS “Mystery!” credits). It all pairs beautifully with the props from E.L. Hohn, haunted house lighting by Matt DiVita and spot-on sound design by Carlos Ivan Marquez, Jackie Renaud and Jorge Luna.

Spooky, spoofy and a little bit batty – when it comes to a fearfully good time, you should never Count Dracula out. 

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Irish Classical Theatre has five performances remaining for “Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors,” in the Andrews Theatre, 625 Main St. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26-28, plus 2 p.m. matinees Sept. 28 and 29. The Sept. 28 matinee will include open captioning.  

There are several ticket options. Regular admission, including fees, is $48; $18 for students and veterans, at irishclassical.com.

Rush tickets ($20) are available only at the box office, two hours before each performance, if seats are available.

The Sept. 28 evening show is “Pay What You Can,” for tickets at the box office on the day of performance.