Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Eilidh Loan, Ben Castle-Gibb, Michael Moreland, Thierry Mabonga, Natali McCleary, Greg Powrie, Sarah MacGillivray.
The unrelenting fascination with arguably two of 19th Century’s literature finest, and most disturbing of creations, Victor Frankenstein and the Monster is one that perhaps asks the most salient, complex and frightening questions to nag at the mind and heart of all who have read Mary Shelley’s intense novel.
A literary masterpiece which delves unrepentantly into the psychology of the dawning of the age of the gothic horror and how we as a society, almost 200 years on from the first publication of the novel, are still in awe and fear of the science that surrounds us as the Georgian period was. Even into the Victorian era when James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated the use of constant electric light and set the way to revolutionising how we spend our time in the dark.
The questions of morality, of reanimation aside, what has always been missing it seems from the demanding mind is the psychological effect the Modern Prometheus had on the mind of Mary Shelly, the daughter of one of the most revolutionary women of her time, Mary Wollstonecraft, and to whom death seemed to be a natural, albeit unwelcome, state.
Quite rightly there is always praise for the novel, there is always sincere tribute to the creator but to the union of them both, rarely do we see the acknowledgement that comes with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, two entities driven by a single purpose, the question of life.
Life can come from a nightmare, the creature in the dark, the product of illumination and for Rona Munro who has taken the symbolism of the monster and merged it with that of every writer’s worst fears, being left alone with the mysterious and the sinister thoughts and making them real. This effect captures the rawness of the procedure, the anatomy and surgical skill of such a writer, and with the superb Eilidh Loan placing the strength of Mary Shelley in her performance, what the audience is certain of is that they are witnessing a figurative first-hand account of how science, modern belief and the unknown can terrify, not only them as they sit and let the narrative flow, but that of any writer that they know.
The life of a writer is rarely examined, the thought process in how they create a meaningful character rarely discussed, as if by magic, we believe, they appear. However, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein sets such thoughts adrift, cuts them loose and scatters them to the four winds, for a reason, for in imagination do we see fear take shape and for Selladoor Productions this is a prime example of that one question, what constitutes life, what right have we to play God even with the heartbeat of science directing us.
A play of illumination, of directness and above all heart, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has stirred once more.
Ian D. Hall