Stereotyping Shelley

Regarding Philip Brandes’ theater review [“Humanity Pulses Through ‘Frankenstein’” Aug. 28]: In claiming that A Noise Within’s production of “Frankenstein” “rescues Mary Shelley’s creation from the stereotype of innumerable grunting, lumbering movie monsters,” Brandes is himself guilty of stereotyping, particularly if among his “innumerable” monsters he includes the most famous of all.

Boris Karloff became an overnight star in James Whale’s 1931 “Frankenstein” because actor and director, with powerful sensitivity, revealed the humanity in Mary Shelley’s inarticulate, tormented creature. If, as Brandes says, A Noise Within’s play “illuminates” Mary Shelley’s vision, it is not because it rescues her work from the first “Frankenstein” films but because it carries on the tradition they started. Preston Neal Jones Hollywood