Monstrously good show
Lovett and West’s modern Frankenstein is monstrously atmospheric
Peacock
I’ve never been a great fan of Mary Shelley’s novel about Frankenstein and his monster, although the idea is great — the dangers of man taking the power of creation into his own hands and trying to turn himself into God. The villain of the story is the scientist Victor Frankenstein who creates a creature he can’t control. The victim is the creature, left to fend for himself, an unloved outcast, taking revenge on his creator by killing those nearest to him. It’s all very relevant to modern life, where experiments are done just because they can be done, with ethical aspects underrated. Where embryos can be spare parts surplus to requirements, surrogate mothers become part of a production line and individuals can father countless offspring through donations to sperm banks.
In this absorbing one-man stage version by Michael West, we hear the story direct from Frankenstein himself. Shattered by guilt at his mother’s death, he explains that his experiments were driven by the desire to save his family from death by calling new organisms into life. His methods here are not the stitching together of body parts, but the modern process of altering life forces, by splicing stem cells with his own DNA.
The results were disastrous but he insists that the process was legitimate – the trouble came when he lost control of the creature. And yet the authorities insist he, not the creature, was responsible for his brother’s death. Why? Because his own DNA was found on the body. The story as told here is very reminiscent of Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde and Huxley’s Brave New World.
Louis Lovett gives a remarkable performance as Frankenstein, sanely discussing his plans, tormented by his quest to re-capture the creature, plagued with guilt, torn about making a female mate for his creation and overwhelmed by fears of the danger to his young fiancée, but insisting he did no wrong. It’s a simple production that makes great use of sound and lighting effects to hammer home the sense of horror, and it creates more atmosphere than some more spectacular film versions of the story.