I'm not sure what happened at the National Theatre on Wednesday night. Apparently it was a stage adaptation of Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller. I'm not so sure, more like a viciously masticated version of the brilliantly disturbing Romantic novel by Mary Shelly, a story that weaves the horrors and fears of childbirth (her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft died during Shelly's own birth, and Mary Shelly herself was pregnant when she wrote the book - she delivered the manuscript mere weeks before she gave birth) with the vibrato contemporary social paranoia relating to the advances of science and the industrial age. I'm not sure if this production could have been any worse if it had been turned into a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The good news is, the production sold out before the run began, so unless you have tickets, you can't see it. the bad news is you almost should see it, it's THAT BAD. what can Danny Boyle have been thinking?
Where to start? The script, probably, which was at best lamentable, at worst laughable, and not in the way intended... which leads me on to: where did the random injections of comedy come from? i thought the story was supposed to resonate on a philosophical and tragic level. apparently not. the funny moments were utterly bizarre and not that funny. anyway, that was a minor grievance in the grand scheme of things. the script basically drew out the most basic elements of the story, and that's it. a GCSE synopsis in script form. and, actually, not even that. Absent of nuance or subtlety, it failed to tease out themes with anything more than an obvious poke. Brrr.
On stage you're thrown straight in to the meat of the plot, with the monster fighting his way free from a oval membrane and thrashing about the stage, naked, sort of moany-howling as he tries to speak and walk for the first time. i worried this period would never end. it certainly took it's time. It was gratuitous, unnecessary, overlong and overindulgent and, much as i am a super-fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, for a monster, is a was a little, errr, un-monster like. pretty hot even, i'd say, save from a scar on his head (pretty much the only real sign he'd been assembled from the bodies of dead drunks and criminals). Which is about as far from the gigantic proportions of the monstrous beast you can get, really. scary? hell no. well scary in the sense of ordering a monster and getting a scarecrow. anyway, what really confused me is that Frankenstein (Johnny Lee Miller phoning in his performance according to Hannah and completely failing to convey any of the character's demonic obsessiveness or conflicted agonies throughout) rather than being abjectly repulsed by his sinful, unnatural creation and rejecting him with vitriolic fury simply takes one look, says 'eeew', and scarpers. as you don't even see him create the monster, their bond is negligible. It totally undermines the entire rest of the play ie there is no real spark to ignite the monster's sense of rejection, which builds into a fury culminating in a killing spree that includes Frankenstein's brother. you have no sense of the unhappy rejection mounting to volcanically eruptive proportions at all. there is no real relationship to be rejected from. And as for the S-P-E-L-T O-U-T' homo-eroticism... sheesh! someone stick a machete in my head, please.
Skip to the action as it unfurls in bosom of the Frankenstein clan and you have love interest Naomi Harris tearing to shreds what pathetically poor dialogue she is handed, a father who delivers lines in such a way that to compare him to wood would be to flatter him, and extras who conform to type in the most grating manner - plump maid with a west country accent, anyone?
This is the kind of theatre that makes me hate the theatre - it's over the top, 'actorly', heavy handed. sadly it's the sort of thing that people who don't go to the theatre might be tempted to book for but, having watched, will leave not just sorely disappointed, but put off booking for other things. i wanted to shout: THIS IS NOT WHAT ALL THEATRE IS LIKE, I PROMISE.
What was, however, undeniably brilliant was the set - it was knock your socks off... steam trains power into the audience like the oppressive insistence of the industrial revolution, and scientific progress itself. The monster's shameful retreat to the countryside, where he takes refuge with a blind old man sees the appearance of a cocoon like sanctuary, a pale white Wendy house with translucent walls, it's both a metaphor for the sight of the old man and a protection from prying and hateful eyes, as it blurs and softens reality. Incidental usage of rolls of grass, showers from above and flames are all imaginatively introduced, conveying distance, variety, and changing scenery of the monster's journey with ease and speed. Very clever is the civilised beauty of the Frankenstein home which on its underside is symbolically all jutting beams, slimy walls and murky shadows, a lair where Frankenstein retreats to create a she-devil mate for the monster. The white shards of arctic ice that set the scene for the final chase between monster and creator envelop the audience - we are the landscape of the chase between monster and creator, science and civilisation... and finally the lights... above the stage are a sea of lights hanging down - domestic seeming lights clustered together through which light swims like on rippling waves. They are beautiful, magical, emotional and incredibly powerful, sweeping you along involuntarily - but which ultimately only serve to exaggerate all that's missing on stage below them.
