“What’s wrong, Babe? You don’t like pumpkin spice wartime election eclipse hurricane season?” My favorite quip on Instagram sums up the moment.

If it sure makes sense to you, the cure to your autumnal malaise is at hand.

Ensemble Theatre Company’s (ETC) witty, high-caliber, gender-bending, spooky-season romp through Gordon Greenberg’s and Steve Rosen’s “DRACULA: A Comedy of Terrors,” is currently causing a curative blend of shivers and giggles at the New Vic Theatre in Santa Barbara.

ETC executive director Scott DeVine started the gathering right on time. After a few quick acknowledgements, we were transported to a world of “wampires” and innocents via an ominous tolling bell, a few notes of Bach’s scary organ fugue to set the mood, and a narrator who introduces a tale of “life, death and a hot guy who takes off his shirt.”

A quartet of dynamic, versatile Equity actors amid a bank of fog and creepy lighting escort us into the story like haunted mansion servants, and proceed to bring at least 15 characters, and several animals, to life over a fast-moving, 90-minute shake-up of Bram Stoker’s archetypal tale.

DeVine shared that the play was the talk of off-Broadway last year and that this version, he thinks, eclipses that production. I could see the possibility.

Director Jamie Torcellini lead the team to carry on the ETC tradition of making more than the most of the New Vic’s intimate space, a small cast, and the venue’s capacity for luscious sound and lighting, and the creative set design that are hallmarks of ETC productions. 

You might think it’s a dangerous carriage ride by night through the 19th-century English countryside, a Transylvanian castle or a stormy night at sea, but it’s really by turns an experimental asylum, a club rager, a teleportation portal. 

With a montage thrown in for good measure — because you gotta have a montage.

You might think he’s a straight-laced fiancé, she’s a suggestible ingénue, or he’s a super-cut bodybuilder who can’t help revealing his 10-pack (Count ’em, I dare you.)

But it turns out, he might be an unleashed alpha in metallic pleather, she might be an unflinching strategist who saves the day, and he might be an undead trickster in search of lasting love

Through the hilarity and the horror, you get the clear message: Anyone can go any way at any time.

And it’s all good. 

During the run-up to an election that has us all a little edgy, I didn’t expect the story of a blood-thirsty, 1,000-year-old Transylvanian count to restore my faith in humanity, but I left the theater energized, hopeful and fortified. 

Big kudos to cast members Casey J. Adler, Janna Cardia, Regina Fernandez, Adam Hagenbuch and Josh Odsess-Rubin; scenic designer Stephen Gifford; lighting designer Jared A. Sayeg; costume designer Marcey Froehlich; sound designer James Ard; and Kevin Williams, prop designer

And thanks to ETC dramaturg Ward LeHardy for the illuminating program notes.

“DRACULA” runs Wednesday through Sunday through Oct. 27, with pre-show talks on Wednesdays and a post-performance Talk-Back Q&A on Thursday, Oct. 24.

Get your tickets to “DRACULA” now, when you need it most. Visit etcsb.org or call 805-965-5400.

Art critic Judith Smith-Meyer is a round-the-clock appreciator of the creative act.