Most acclaimed
Life of Che
The book begins in Bolivia in 1967, then flashes back through Che's life ― his childhood, his radicalizing motorcycle trip with Alberto Granado, his taking up of arms in Guatemala, his meeting with Fidel Castro, and his subsequent military and political maneuvers, ending in a fade-out to his death. Alberto Breccia and his son, Enrique, drew Life of Che. Enrique draws the Bolivia passages in a woodcut style, while Alberto depicts the flashbacks in his trademark, expressionistic black-and-white. It is primarily set in the field and with the people. Héctor Germán Oesterheld (The Eternaut) blends his authorial voice with Che's first-person. Life of Che is imbued with a sense of immediacy, as both Che and, eventually, Oesterheld would meet their ends by a military government backed by the American CIA.
Dracula
1986
Our dramatization of this myth of ancient horror is not for children. We do not minimize the genuine horror and sexuality of the story. It is not camp; it is not played for laughs, though it does have important scenes of comic relief; we take the myth of the vampire seriously. It is not a marathon; we follow where Bram Stoker leads, carefully condensing and pruning his expansive novel into a tightly structured theatrical experience of normal length. We dissected the events and chronology of his story down to the minutest detail, and we found that his work is seamless; grant him only the premise that there can be such a being as a vampire, and all else follows with flawless probability and necessity. In the end, the audience should feel that they have been with our characters on a tremendous journey, a quest with life and death at stake, not just for their lives, but for their souls as well. The end of the play--the final victory over the vampire--is a transcendent victory over evil incarnate. This play is a play--not a dramatization with narration and dialogue. It is a fully realized play for the stage, conveying story through action and dialogue. We do go so far as to use Stoker's convention in which written messages convey important events and information, but we always present such messages in the mouths and by the actions of the characters who write and send them. Last but not least, we embrace the emotional richness of the 19th century language and characterization. In many cases, we draw our dialogue directly from Stoker.