Lack of human compassion turns Creature into a fearful monster
Mary Shelley’s seminal 1818 novel “Frankenstein” is often seen as a cautionary tale about playing God, as if Victor Frankenstein’s great crime were presuming to create new life by reanimating a corpse. However, the story seems to illustrate a different moral entirely.
Bringing the Creature to life isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself. Leaving it to its own devices, however, adrift in a hostile world that fears and despises it, is unforgivable, and it’s that lack of nurture that gradually turns the Creature into a monster. Ultimately, “Frankenstein” depicts a monstrous failure of parenting.
That’s the tragedy of the story as it plays out at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose, in a new adaptation written and directed by Kit Wilder. A frequent director for the company, Wilder also cowrote and helmed its 2014 premiere of “Truce: A Christmas Wish from the Great War.”
Wilder simplifies the story somewhat, omitting elements such as the framing device of Captain Walton, the character in the novel who relates the whole story as Victor Frankenstein told it to him. In lieu of any narration, the ensemble somberly recites quotations about human nature from various philosophers, scientists and other writers. Portraits of the authors are projected behind the actors speaking the quotes instead of spoken or projected citations, which becomes an interesting challenge of how many faces the viewer recognizes.
Nick Mandracchia gives an affecting performance as The Creature, evolving from newborn vulnerability to delicate, wounded intelligence to cold menace. Although he’s large and physically imposing, there’s no attempt to make The Creature look hideous or anything other than human through makeup or costuming.
Shelley’s original Creature is much more talkative than later versions prevalent in movies and pop culture, and here he makes many eloquent pleas to be given a chance not to be treated as a monster. In fact, he makes that case so often and at such length that it lessens the impact of his final face-off with Victor, because by that point, we’ve heard it all before.
Max Tachis is an anguished and volatile Victor Frankenstein, impatient with his experiments and feverishly fearful of his creation. Jeremy Ryan is a low-key, concerned companion as his friend Henry.
One clever touch is how Wilder avoids any description or depiction of Victor’s process of bringing The Creature to life. We always come in at the “and now we wait” stage.
Roneet Aliza Rahamim is a strong and sympathetic Elizabeth, Victor’s fiancee raised with him since childhood, who doesn’t understand why he’s so distant and agitated lately. In the meantime, she hangs around stately Frankenstein Manor playing with his little kid brother (a boisterous Nicholas Papp). Meanwhile, Victor’s amusingly single-minded father (jovial and bewildered Steve Lambert) really only cares about Elizabeth and Victor when they are going to get married.
Wilder keeps up a tense atmosphere of suspense, so that every encounter with The Creature (or indeed, anything going on in his general vicinity) makes viewers brace themselves for sudden tragedy. Whether it’s a saintly blind man (Ross Arden Harkness) and his poor but happy family (Caitlin Papp and Alexander Draa) or a young girl (Kassia Bonesteel) who’s strayed too far into the woods, anyone who wanders into this story can only hope they make it out alive. George Psarras’ sound design greatly heightens that tension, full of unnerving music, whistling wind, dripping liquid and creepy whispers.
Ron Gasparinetti’s compelling set of irregular pillars jutting at odd angles conspires beautifully with Nick Kumamoto’s projections so that we only see fragments of the backgrounds. Images flash and swirl when The Creature is plagued by sudden headaches, and tiles gradually fall away from one repeated background pattern as if they’re parts of The Creature’s humanity, chipped away by ill treatment until all that’s left is darkness.