LET THERE BE FRIGHT
‘Frankenstein’ zeroes in on creature’s rage, confusion and the danger of playing God
Centuries before “Westworld” and “Black Mirror” started messing with our understanding of consciousness and being, Mary Shelley laid down a narrative template that’s yet to be improved on. Set the story in some grotesque version of the Wild West or in a near-future dystopia: You’ll eventually arrive at the same mindbending questions Shelley posed in her 1818 novel “Frankenstein.”
Remy Bumppo’s stark, mindblowing “Frankenstein” gets to the core of the novel with eerie impact. The staging by director Ian Frank of Nick Dear’s adaptation is cruel, violent and visually and sonically stunning. It’s also an exploration of the very nature of sentient existence and a haunting cautionary tale about the danger of playing God.
“Frankenstein” is wordless for the first 15 minutes or so. Its opening scenes are the duration of a lighting strike and have the same blaze of white-hot clarity. We see The Creature, torturously emerging from an embryonic sac. He’s a naked, skinned, hairless piece of thrashing meat with eyes like open wounds, a mouth like a knife slash and skin the color of steam, stitched through with livid purple sutures and webs of blue veins. Immediately, we’re immersed in the chaos and confusion of a thing just born into an utterly alien world.
Dear hews closely to the novel. Before he learns to speak, The Creature learns he is feared and hated, and that the world’s other inhabitants will always meet him with violence. There’s a brief respite as he learns to speak and read (Milton, no less) from a kindly blind man. Their friendship doesn’t end well. The body count starts adding up. So do the existential unanswerables: If you have no past, who are you? Is evil learned or inherent? In search of answers and a panacea for the loneliness that comes with being shunned by all of humankind, The Creature sets off to find his creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein.
In the end (spoiler alert if you aren’t familiar with the 200-year-old classic), Dr. Frankenstein and The Creature are trapped in a hellscape at the coldest reaches of the northern latitudes, a father and son, intent on strangling each other in some icy perversion of a womb. Dear pulls directly from Shelley’s indelible dialogue when The Creature describes the rest of their twined lives: “”He lives for my destruction. I live to lead him on.”
Remy Bumppo’s ingenious staging is marked by strenuous double casting. Dr. Frankenstein and The Creature are both played by Nick Sandys and Greg Matthew Anderson, who alternate in the roles. Opening night, Sandys was The Creature to Anderson’s Dr. Victor. The dynamic between the two is electrifying. Sandys’ Creature is primal, feral and recognizably humane. When he yowls in frustration and loneliness, the sound of pain seems to pierce the sky.
Anderson’s Dr. Frankenstein will make you shiver, and not from cold. He’s obsessive, monomaniacal and fueled by raving ego. When he celebrates his ability to create life from the putrefying flesh of the dead, his eyes go feverish, wild. When an agonized Creature demands answers (“Why did you create me?”) Dr. Frankenstein’s answer is chilling in its utter lack of humanity. (“Because I could.”)
“Frankenstein” is also a brutal exploration of the nature-versus-nurture debate. The Creature’s journey from trusting innocence to singleminded vengeance is cruel, brutal and short. His howling reaction to rage and sorrow (“What do men do when they feel like this?”) is all too recognizable.
Frank’s staging is tech-heavy, with sound designer Christopher Kriz, lighting designer Mike Durst and scenic designer Joe Schermoly crafting a world that’s defined by hard angles, searing light and ambient sound. The backdrop is a dark sea of black and indigo, slashed through with a jagged rip of light that yawns open like a gaping mouth as the story continues. The sound design veers from familiar (birds, rain, singing) to alien with an abruptness that will keep you, like The Creature, off balance. Hai-Ting Chinn’s hypnotic vocals give the production an ethereal, otherworldly quality that contrasts and highlights the endlessly destructive passions of The Creature.
Through all, “Frankenstein” lays bare anxiety-inducing conundrums. What is the price of alchemic creation and treading into areas where even angels fear to go? If all our memories vanished today, who would we be tomorrow? The latter is a query faced by anyone who has dealt with Alzheimer’s or aphasia or any other neural disorder that tinkers with the synapses embedded under our skulls. “Frankenstein’s” deep dive into the matter is as scary as anything you’re apt to see this Halloween season.