THE SOUNDS OF FRANKENSTEIN
Power of radio propels play
Along with pumpkins and candy, Halloween means scary monsters, and few monsters in Western tradition have had longer staying power than Frankenstein. Mary Shelley’s 200-year-old novel has spawned dozens of film spinoffs, including the 1931 classic with Boris Karloff as the Creature, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein starring Kenneth Branagh and Robert De Niro, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Mel Brooks’ hilarious Young Frankenstein.
Shelley’s serious book explores the dangers of the unfettered scientific imagination, the meaning of being human and the relationship of the human to whatever created us. Wireless Wings Radio Ensemble provides a refreshing new take on this old story with a version that nicely fits Pacific Theatre’s mandate to “rigorously explore the spiritual aspects of human experience.”
Director Chris Lam transforms Pacific’s small stage into a radio studio with a quartet of strong actors voicing Peter Church’s smart adaptation and creating handmade sound effects amplified by Jonathan Kim’s dramatic lighting and Rick Colhoun’s recorded sound and music.
No need for scary monster makeup or costumes. The words and sounds of radio drama allow us to create those images in our minds. The focus is on Shelley’s ideas and the relationship of Creature to creator. But it’s also cool watching the actors address their microphones.
Tariq Leslie is fantastic as the Creature, the botched, damned creation of scientist Victor Frankenstein, voiced with equal fervour and desperation by Corina Akeson. The two take turns narrating their stories when not confronting each other.
Matthew Simmons shines as a Scottish magistrate and the blind cottager the Creature hopes will befriend him. Diana Squires plays Victor’s fiancee Elizabeth and the ship’s captain who narrates the end of the story. She and Simmons create the foley effects before our eyes.
They range from simple — crumpled paper, a bare hand
across a window pane — to an elaborate contraption that simulates the heart-stopping sound of a gallows. The effects are precise, subtle and fun. To indicate a man’s footsteps, Simmons taps a pair of shoes across a desktop. For a woman’s tread he uses women’s shoes.
Church’s adaptation focuses on the Creature’s developing consciousness of his misery — physically monstrous, unloved and alone — and Victor’s growing awareness of the terrible thing he has wrought as the Creature commits one grisly murder after another.
The Creature has two mikes: one with clear sound for his narration, which Leslie performs in a normal voice; the other with echo effects as he struggles to articulate his feelings in a human language he is just learning.
At times the Creature unleashes a growly scream into the echomike that made me jump in my seat. The visceral moment might then segue to the intellectual as he and Victor engage in philosophical arguments about what the creator owes his creation and vice versa.
The second act drags a little with lengthy disquisitions and strained credibility: The Creature learns to read and argue theology from a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost he conveniently finds in the woods. But the overall experience is novel and fascinating, the tricks of live theatre producing a welcome Halloween treat.