Frankenstein - Theatre's Glorious Prometheus

 

A play by Nick Dear, directed by Danny Boyle,

starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller

 

 

Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 

Heartbeat… gradually gaining in strength. Something in the parchment-like cocoon, a grotesque womb, is moving, there are slender fingers tentatively stretching the pale membrane… again… again… the skin is ripped… and a child is born…

…not quite, and yet this creature is exactly that. Undoubtedly a grown man, yet utterly unaware of his own existence. With a dirty loincloth as his only clothing he lies on the cold laboratory floor, hands shaking, legs moving unconsciously, breathing – at first – with difficulty, very much like a beached fish, helplessly trashing about with its fins. Initial uncoordinated movement. He gasps for breath, insecure, as if not used to breathing at all… and the umbilical cord hanging from the rupture suggests that this man has not drawn breath in a while. His limbs move, almost on their own accord, testing their functions on an intuitive level, accompanied by the man’s strangled groans.

 

 

Being born is arduous, in particular when you are a conglomerate of various parts of dead bodies. His body is covered with scars, signs of how roughly he has been stitched together. The emphasis was on functionality, not beauty.

Frankenstein’s creation, his Creature, moves awkwardly, slowly gaining more control, resembling a foal getting up after birth, unbalanced first, then steadier on its legs, but still without absolute control. He moves like a man subjected to ataxia at first, a straddle-legged and insecure gait. But we will soon realize that there is nothing wrong with those parts of his nervous system responsible for coordinating movement. His brain and his intelligence are intact.

The Creature makes several steps, and we hear him grunt in a tone one might interpret as triumph, then disappointment as he stumbles and falls, only to get up again in another supreme effort. He is already a survivor, a being striving for life, hungry, and cold, petrified. He doesn’t know the hostile world he has been thrown into, but – on the subconscious level belonging to all social beings – aches to be a part of it. With a child’s curiosity and driven by basic needs, this man, the Creature, begins his journey, and I can hardly wait to be taken along. I am in tears as he tries his first steps and, gaining more agility, moves about the stage, laughing, proud of his achievement, and yet so utterly vulnerable.

When Frankenstein, the play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley, opened at the National Theatre last year, I had no chance to see it during its limited run between February and May. As much as I tried to get away from work and jump over to London, it was just not possible. But – I was given a marvellous opportunity by the NT’s re-broadcast in cinemas, and I’m exceedingly grateful to the participants for agreeing to this.

And here I am… sitting in a darkened cinema, getting sucked into a play as if I was actually present at the time it took place on the National’s stage. Being intimately familiar with theatre, on stage and off, I feel able to imagine how it would have felt to be actually sitting there, the smells of wood, sweat, make-up, the sounds of feet on the stage floor, smoke and mirrors…ah, theatre! I will see it four times, on Sundays reserved for this very special, entirely unique and entrancingly magnetic theatrical adventure. As these first minutes go by, I already know that this is time well invested.

I have loved Mary Shelley’s unique creation myth for many years. I believe I first read it when I was about seventeen and have re-read it several times since. It remains a fascinating story to me, and I enjoy how differently I have experienced the novel – according to my own status of education, life experience, opinions and injuries I sustained during my still young(ish) life.

In the story, Mary Shelley refers to the result of Frankenstein’s eccentric experiment as creature, wretch, fiend, monster and even it. To me, I have to admit, kind reader, the Creature has always been a man. I find it hard to not see a man here, a human being, despite his grotesque origins.

 

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.
 

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 

The play takes a different course than Shelley’s novel – it focuses primarily on the Creature, and we, the audience, experience most of the story from the Creature’s point of view. Captain Walton’s letters to his sister are not there (which serve as a frame for Shelley’s story of gothic science fiction), and we don’t hear many details of Victor Frankenstein’s childhood or studies.

Walter Scheele, self-declared chronicler of Castle Frankenstein and Romanian historian Radu Florescu speculate in their books that Mary Shelley visited Castle Frankenstein (South of Darmstadt, Germany) in 1814 during her journey along the Rhine where Johann Konrad Dippel, a theologian, anatomist, doctor and alchemist, born in 1673 at the actual castle, is supposed to have conducted various alchemic experiments involving human remains. However, there is no historical proof to this allegation, yet the idea alone seems fascinating to me, since an inscription on a monument in his honour says about him: Dippel was a supreme mind, unyielding, proud, aiming high… which sounds a tad like Victor Frankenstein, wouldn’t you say? – In Scene 29 of the play Victor exclaims ‘My mind is superb! It’s superb!’

Victor, born into a wealthy Genevan family, studies science in Ingolstadt (a German university founded in the 15^th century). As his mother dies of scarlet fever, shortly before he is to depart for university, he becomes obsessed with chemistry and galvanism (the science of stimulating muscles with electricity, an effect found by Italian physician Luigi Galvani in the late 17-hundreds, basically the foundation of today’s electrophysiology). Soon Victor ventures into God-territory by creating a man intended to be beautiful to behold, alas, the creature is hideous to him, and Victor flees, repelled by what he created.

This is one of the many disturbing scenes of the play… Victor wearily enters his Ingolstadt laboratory and finds the Creature outside the membrane-covered womb-construction, where he collapsed, exhausted from his first steps as a living being.

Victor in all likelihood thinks that the membrane by accident didn’t hold its contents. At his attempt to move the Creature Victor realises in horror that the experiment lives. It can’t be. No. It can’t be…

The genius is just as helpless here as his creation is. This is a situation Victor in unprepared for and thereby overcome with fear and disgust. These strong sensations take over and the scholar abandons all scientific thought (or compassion for that matter) and flees after covering the wretched thing with his cloak (unaware, though, that his journal remains in its pocket which will ensure his doom).

In this scene we find a pleading Creature, yearning for contact with another being, yet not fully grasping his own intentions… As I watch this moment, I feel reminded of Nobel-honouree Konrad Lorenz’ studies on filial imprinting. Lorenz demonstrated how geese, bred in an incubator, would imprint on the first moving object they became aware of within the first minutes of their lives. Pictures of Lorenz followed by young geese that imprinted on him became quite famous at the time.

The Creature, very much like a gosling, tries to follow his maker, in desperate need to connect with him. Only a few minutes old, he already craves another’s reaction and recognition on a purely instinctive level (since he has no inner psychological representation of his own self or his father as of yet). Much later, years really, he will return to the one person he somewhat imprinted on, if you’ll allow me this comparison, kind reader, and seal their shared fate.

For now he is left behind in a cold room, frightened, in a benighted state… and without identity. Much later the Creature will tell De Lacey asking for his name that he never heard his name… for me one of the saddest moments in the play.

He is cast out, nameless, thereby lacking a first sense of identity. He later discovers that everything owns a name, be it snow, fire or stone, but the Creature does not. He remains bereft of the sense of belonging a name usually carries with it – it’s a ‘luxury’ he is not granted. A name connects us, on a number of levels, to our identity – our nationality, our background, sometimes social class (or parental expectations which indicates that the parent in this scenario, Frankenstein, didn’t have any expectations for his Creature, and if he did actually have any, they most likely didn’t coincide with this child’s own wishes).

Since Victor doesn’t see anything else than an experiment, an equation, a slave even, as he says later in the play, there is no need for a name. ‘You have no rights, you are a slave!’ (Scene 24). And there is another phenomenon connected to the Creature’s no-name existence: often people make the mistake of calling the Creature Frankenstein, inadvertently robbing him of an existence of his own and practically uniting or identifying him with his maker (which is not entirely inaccurate, since both belong to one another, very much like two sides of the same coin). It’s a very popular misunderstanding, and in all likelihood rooted in the fact that this man has no name.

Furthermore, it shows the dehumanization of the Creature, since the focus of countless films has mostly been on Victor and his narcissistically desperate struggle to create life which has also furthered the Creature ‘identity’ as a monster, not giving him any voice at all – whereas in the book we meet a very astute being.

 

This play by Nick Dear and Danny Boyle superbly twists the popular story, and we follow the events along with the Creature – we are invited into his soul to witness the evolution of an innocent man who learns – by painful experience – what makes a human being.

Scene 18

Creature:            I have been reading Plutarch.

De Lacey:           Ah, yes, the founders of ancient Rome – men that showed that the world could be       improved. (…)

De Lacey:            We band together to help one another, and do good.

Creature:            But then you massacre each other.

 

Scene 29

Creature:            I am good at the art of assimilation. I have watched, and listened, and learnt. At first I knew nothing at all but I studied the ways of men, and slowly I learnt: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt he highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie. 

A mirror is held up to us, isn’t it? It reflects a barren place, the only place the Creature has found during his struggles. It is in various ways an echo of our world. In our Western society many live (or try to live) a life of self-focused and competitive entitlement but even within our society – and all around the globe – many people are in a constant fight for life. A happy few enjoy the privileges of financial, material, emotional security, but a lot of people out there will never know what security means.

The rejection the Creature faces in his early days will shape his nature and leave him in a state of uncertainty and instability. His encounters with a prostitute and a couple of beggars are rather unpleasant. He is beaten up, told to ‘Piss off! Bugger off!’, hungry and very much afraid.

I am infinitely moved by the Creature’s attempts to understand the world he has been thrown into. As he discovers the heat of fire and its effects on food and pot, the chilling quality of night rain and the strange taste of grass…, as he ecstatically shrieks at the morning birds and bathes in the warm rays of the rising sun…, I am guided through a variety of emotions: anger at the prejudice he meets, joy at his touchingly childlike curiosity – and fear for him and of him.

This is a person of raw emotions, unfiltered by social rules or education, and even though he finds a friend in an old blind man in the woods, De Lacey, who offers him friendship and parental guidance, the time they spend together is too short to actually train his empathy. Despite the care he is shown by De Lacey, the Creature has experienced too much disappointment, contempt and fear, on a number of traumatic levels. The moral compass provided by the elder is not stable enough, not fed by adequate experience.  

Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Shakespeare, Hamlet 

His idea of how the world is run stems from books De Lacey introduces him to, the ideals of the ancient world, characterized by reason and logic, true, but also by revenge – as he finds with Plutarch, contemporary of Nero, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

I am immensely moved by the Creature’s progress, amazed by his curiosity and ability to imitate. It’s a grown man’s brain, and though emotionally in an unrefined and innocent state, his intellect grasps everything quickly. All those synapses, dead for who-knows-how-long, produce new connections in his process of learning. He slowly dares to trust De Lacey more, allowing him to touch him, to ‘see’ him, and finds compassion and relationship in response.

De Lacey becomes the kind of father Frankenstein refused to be. It is most unfortunate that Victor didn’t seize the opportunity. De Lacey teaches the Creature literature, but also the sounds of nature, the characteristics of the seasons (which gives us lovely scenes as the Creature charmingly discovers snow). And the Creature, in return, takes care of the obstacles in the field and occasionally provides the family with fresh hare and birds. It’s evident, as I see it, that the Creature is at first a very compassionate man, willing to learn and hope. He is still governed by fear, though.

Scene 16

De Lacey:            I have taught you how to speak! How to read. There is hope. Who knows what you may accomplish?

Creature:            (shakes his head) Hate me.

De Lacey:            Who does?

Creature:            Men. Women. Childs. Dogs.

De Lacey:            No, they don’t.

Creature:            Throw stones. Beat me. Everywhere! Everywhere!

During his studies with De Lacey, the Creature surely curiously ventures out into the world and meets hatred. ‘Everywhere!’ Life seems to bear hard on him, as he asks De Lacey during one of their walks in the woods ‘How long are we meant to be alive for?’  Of course, this might just be an innocent question or one spurred by the scientific manner of thinking De Lacey introduced him to, but to my ears these words also imply a touch of immense sadness. He is solitary. And sad. Like the moon, as he describes to De Lacey:

Scene 18

De Lacey:            Why is it (the moon) sad?

Creature:            Because it is solitary.

De Lacey:            Why are you sad?

Creature:            Because with all that I read, all that I learn, I discover how much I do not know. Ideas batter me like hailstones. Questions but no answers. Who am I? Where am I from? Do I have a family?

De Lacey:            You have us. My son will not turn you away. I promise you. Come along and say hello to him.

Creature:            No!

 

There is no reason for him to believe that De Lacey’s son and beautiful daughter-in-law might treat him any differently, and the Creature hesitates for a long time before agreeing to meet De Lacey’s suggestion. When he finally does, in the most courtly and civil fashion, the reaction he gets is exactly what he feared all along – it’s the kind of reaction the Creature has gotten used to by now: rejection in the most malicious manner.

Watching this scene my stomach protests, I feel literally sick. I know that people can behave thus. I know there is no end to man’s cruelty. I know how fear – however unfounded – can drive man to unspeakable deeds, but still I find it difficult to accept. To call a man a beast, a monster, based solely on the way he looks?! How many men have come back from wars disfigured and monstrous in their looks, but still men? Traumatized and injured beyond their physical wounds. Have you ever seen, kind reader, the kind of wounds shrapnel or grenades produce? Disastrous injuries. Ugly, yes, horrific to behold, but would you turn these men away because of their disfigurement? Would you drive them out with whips?

I want to scream at Felix and Agatha – hold your horses for a moment, really look at the Creature, listen to him, and then understand that this is a sentient, gifted being, capable of common sense and compassion. I am aware that these two are not highly educated (a pity, really, with a father like De Lacey) and therefore subscribe to fear and superstition.

There is only one voice telling the Creature that he is an astute man (De Lacey’s), but others repeatedly tell him to ‘Piss off’, tell him how ghastly he is, so he can’t really not believe them, can he? De Lacey is the exception that proves the rule, and how sad that is.

And now, shaped by infinite disappointment, sorrow, loneliness and anger the Creature changes gear. There is only one way – so he hopes – to not experience rejection anymore: living with a companion of his own kind. And there is only one man capable of providing a female – Victor Frankenstein. So, naturally, the Creature travels to Geneva. 

Before him he carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears:

Death, that dark spirit, in ‘s nervy arm doth lie.

Shakespeare, Coriolanus 

As the Creature disrupts the happy scene of Switzerland, we witness a master of manipulation. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to find out that among the books provided by De Lacey were Machiavelli’s Discorsi and Il Principe in which the Creature would have learned that a prince should be virtuous but also willing to abandon those virtues should the necessity arise. In order to secure Frankenstein’s attention, he murders Victor’s brother William – it’s the kind of message nobody could ignore and Victor understands instantly.

It’s another heart-breaking collection of scenes. The Creature approaching the initially curious William, the family discovering the boy’s body and Victor’s shock as he realizes that his past has caught up with him… As a member of the audience I feel what will happen… there is no hope… the story will spiral into a crescendo of pain and loss. I’m deeply fascinated by what’s happening on stage and feel the urge to scream and weep. And, yet, my sympathies are divided now, too. I’d like to slap you and praise you, Danny Boyle, for doing this to me… to have a complex emotional reaction like this is what I yearn for when I watch a play... Theatre can’t get any better than this…

My heart goes out to Victor and Elizabeth, as much as it feels with the Creature. Is it possible that these people have so much in common? I sense the most profound loneliness there. The loneliness of the socially awkward and unappreciated genius, the solitude of the devoted, yet somewhat estranged, bride and the isolation of a Creature not belonging to anyone or any place. At its core, as I experience this play, Frankenstein is an insightful essay on loneliness and the unparalleled amount of vulnerability that belongs to it.

With this scene, the atmosphere becomes dense with imminent disaster.

Victor, substantially vulnerable with his narcissism, follows the Creature’s call and climbs Mont Blanc. Some of the major characteristics of narcissism are – when you look beyond the arrogance, grandiosity, and hypersensitivity to criticism you find on the surface – deep-rooted insecurity and fragile self-esteem which needs to be protected at all costs. Victor’s insecurities show in small gestures and in his longing for greatness – he knows that he is a man of exceptional talent, and yet it has not been enough to compensate the loss of his mother, as this later scene shows:

Scene 25

Monsieur Frankenstein:               Victor, why are you so sad? When your mother was dying –

Viktor:                                              Don’t bring her into it –

M. Frankenstein:                           When your mother was dying, I gave a promise that I would see you wed your cousin Elizabeth. That was my wife’s last wish – that you might be happily married. You were such a sunny child, a carefree child, alert and inquisitive, the joy of our days! I came to believe you would do great things, and I would be proud of you! Instead we have this sullenness, this melancholy, this low fog of doom. You flout my authority; you do not respect the codes by which we live. In short you disappoint me.

Monsieur Frankenstein is quite blunt in his accusations, and he hits the spot that hurts most – the death of Victor’s mother. The loss of her was the beginning of Victor’s obsession to find ways to stop people from dying, to reverse the process of dying, to create new life from death. With the way Victor’s mind works, I wouldn’t be surprised if Victor had felt deeply (however irrationally) responsible for his mother’s death. Had he started earlier with his studies, perhaps he would have been able to keep her alive? Beneath his struggles to be a genius of superb mind we find his desperate need for compensating this loss which sets Victor on a road to loneliness and isolation.

So, driven by curiosity and despair (and, I believe, a subconscious wish to soothe the genius’ solitude), Victor finds his creation. He brings a scalpel, too. This experiment ‘must be curtailed!’

And what a moving, agonizing, complex scene we are given here. There are so many nuances played out. Of course, at first the instincts of the scientist take over – as Victor realizes how perfect his work is.

Scene 24:

Victor:                 Muscular coordination – hand and eye – excellent tissue – perfect balance! And the sutures have held! I failed to make it handsome, but I gave it strength and grace! What an achievement! Unsurpassed in scientific endeavour! God, the madness of that night – the heat, the sweat, the infusions, the moment when I saw it crawl towards me, and I – and I –

Creature:            You ran away.

Victor:                 What?

Creature:            You abandoned me.

Victor:                 (stunned) It speaks.

Creature:            Yes, Frankenstein, it speaks.

Victor:                 You know my name?

The Creature hands Victor the tattered journal.

                              My journal!

Creature:            Why did you abandon me?

Victor:                 I was terrified – what had I done?

Creature:            Built a man, and given him life –

Victor:                 Well, now I have come to take it away –

Creature:            (laughs) Oh, have you?

Victor:                 I have come to kill you!

Creature:            To kill me? Why then did you create me?

Victor:                 To prove that I could!

Creature:            So you make sport with my life?

Victor:                 In the cause of science! You were my greatest experiment – but an experiment that has gone wrong. 

What hubris, oh God. Watching this scene I feel reminded of a line Jeff Goldblum’s character speaks in Jurassic Park: ‘Life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers.’ Victor believed to be able to contain his experiment, and yet it was his scientific genius that allowed his creation to become a man.  This scene illustrates wonderfully Victor’s non-ethical approach to science as a means to an end. And I, again, am going through a plethora of emotions.

Being a psychologist and therapist, I am well-acquainted with the lure and fascination of a scientific approach to a situation, a person or a deed. I understand Victor’s initial joy as he finds his experiment to be surpassing all expectations. He hasn’t applied any ethical standards. He meant to prove that he was capable of creating a man and reverse death, driven by a sense of grandiosity and paying no attention to potential disadvantages or collateral damage.

Scientists have conducted controversial experiments in the past. Today – I sincerely hope – moral and ethical rules are obeyed, but I imagine that there are many Frankensteins out there… trying to go just another step further. They are to be found in all fields of science, I believe, which is an eerie thought. Ambition, as wonderfully shown here, will allow some scientists to abandon accepted rules – to prove that they can… which makes Frankenstein a most contemporary play.  

He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

 

Slowly, Victor becomes aware of more aspects of their mutual tragedy and it is heart wrenching to observe how the pieces begin to form a complex picture.

Victor:                 Do you feel no remorse?

Creature:            Remorse? When I walk through a village, the children throw stones. When I beg for food, they loose their dogs. What is the function of remorse?

Victor:                 I’m sorry, I –

Creature:            Sorry? You’re sorry? You caused this! This is your universe! Frankenstein. Here is my request. I wish to be part of society. But no human being will associate with me. But one of my own kind – one just as deformed and horrible – she would understand – she would –

Again, the issue of loneliness comes up. The Creature’s demand is quite understandable and yet contradictory. With the same breath he accuses Victor of making sport with his life the Creature asks him to do it again. To make sport with another’s life this time, in order to be given a companion.  How easily the Creature subscribes to double standards – it’s absorbing and appalling.

Victor challenges the Creature’s wishes and accuses him of being unreliable, but on other grounds, and I can’t help but wonder – has the thought I just illustrated not occurred to Victor at all?

Victor:                 You say you’ll go abroad and disappear, yet you also say you yearn to be accepted by society. But won’t you grow tired of exile? Won’t you return, and try once more to live among people? (…) But now, when you run wild, there will be two of you, and double the destruction. Why should I facilitate this?

Creature:            Because I am lonely! Every creature has a mate! Every bird in the sky! Even you are to be married. Why am I denied the comforts you allow yourself? A moment ago you were amazed at my intellect, but now you harden your heart. Please, do not be inconsistent, I find it infuriating. All I ask is the possibility of love.

Of course. That’s the bottom line of social, sentient beings. The need to belong to someone. This urge has spurred the Creature’s actions from the beginning. He had hoped to find it with other people, particularly with De Lacey and his family, but to no avail.

Though Victor is moved by the Creature’s loneliness, it is the scientific challenge that wins him over. To create a female – ah, the possibilities! The prospect of the Creature leaving the country for ever drives Victor to make haste – postpone the wedding and accept to disappoint his father and his fiancée.  In many ways Victor seeks solace in science – as science is accountable, logical, while emotion is not. Socially awkward, he doesn’t know how to handle Elizabeth’s wishes, yet alone how to talk to her, hereby displaying a problem many highly gifted people face. With an academic fire burning like a candle at both ends, misery can’t be far.

 

Elizabeth, however, reacts in a most loving manner, like a woman sending off her husband to war. As she notices, sadly, that there is nothing she can say to persuade Victor to stay, she lets him go. Though Victor deems her less intelligent (and I believe he does, even though he corrects himself), Elizabeth sees through his armour. She is endowed with the kind of emotional intelligence Victor lacks. She understands his dire need to engage in some secret endeavour. She feels his desperation and his isolation and that this secret seems hard to bear, but – despite her most convincing efforts to keep him – she gives him latitude.

Elizabeth:           Then go, and do your work, and be brilliant. And after that come home to me, and be my husband.

And that is exactly what Victor is going to be: brilliant. We, the audience, are given a few moments of comic relief as we watch Victor getting to the Orkneys where he employs two crofters, Rab and Ewan, to provide him with fresh human remains. 

It seems Victor works day and night, rarely allowing himself any rest. He looks positively shot to pieces. As good as finished with his task, he falls asleep at the table – probably with the help of some liquor. To my eyes it seemed to be of the same colour as laudanum, but I could be mistaken. We witness a dream. Victor is confronted by William who asks all kinds of inconvenient questions…

William:              Will they reproduce? Will they have wombs, the females? Will they breed?  How quickly will they breed?  How fast is the cycle? How many in a litter? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand?

The boy reflects Victor’s apprehension – what if they actually do reproduce? Will there be hundreds of them roaming the earth? Will they eventually kill all ‘normal’ humans? What is he about to do?

As he wakes from his troubled dream at the Creature’s call, Victor seems less determined, but not less proud of his accomplishment. He shows off his female creation, and the Creature is enthralled. Naturally, she is very beautiful. And while the Creature admires the female – but is not allowed to touch, yet – Victor torments him, caressing and kissing the female creature… a scene of inconceivable cruelty. There is no subtlety here.

Victor:                 She might reject you. She might abhor the sight of you. She might take one look at you and run – she might say she wants to live with a man, not a monster. (…) Look at her cheeks, her lips, her breasts. Who would not desire those breasts? What if she leaves you? What if she finds someone else? How will you feel if you’re deserted by one of your own species, the only one of your own species, the only one you can take to your bed – how will you react?

Creature:            I will run mad if she leaves me!

Victor:                 It’s a risk, then, isn’t it?

Creature:            No, because I will give her such adoration, such devotion she will never want to leave!

Oh, my dear… if you smother her with adulation, she will most likely run away. The Creature has no history of love or being loved, and he professes his desire will all his heart. For him, this is love. And he explains it in the most moving, beautiful fashion:

Victor:                 How does it feel, to be in love?

Creature:           It feels like all the life is bubbling up in me and spilling from my mouth, it feels like my lungs are on fire and my heart is like a hammer, it feels like I can do anything in the world! Anything in the world!

Victor:                 Is that how it feels?

 

And here my heart cracks again.

Victor doesn’t know this kind of love. Well, not for another person. For his work, perhaps. Alas, a creature composed of dead body parts appears to be more capable of love than the brilliant prodigy Victor Frankenstein. As Victor deceives the Creature (callously making him choose the finest dress for his bride) he is about to bring on his own ruin. But not his alone. Victor’s destruction of the female creature will ensure sorrow for his family and the cruellest death for Elizabeth, as well.

For now, Victor is rescued by his father who has come for him, but he knows that the Creature will not rest – and neither will Victor. We are not told how much time passes between the events in Scotland and the wedding in Geneva, but we may safely presume that Victor has not found any peace. There is no bliss for him on his wedding day, only tension. He has no eye for his beautiful bride who waits for him to join her in their bedroom.  

My nearest and dearest enemy.

Shakespeare, Henry IV 

 

When Victor appears at long last, he is not there to make love to her. He feels that the Creature is near – the sure instinct of a man driven by conscience and terror. It is most ill-fated that Victor has not earlier taken the time to share his dreadful secret. When he finally does, Elizabeth finds it hard to believe and she assumes her husband might be delusional. He had a nervous collapse in Scotland, after all.

But there is something about Victor’s desperate need to explain, his broken down hauteur, that she can’t but trust his words and, moreover, offer forgiveness, strength, tenderness and understanding. And, finally, Victor admits I do love you, Elizabeth.

What a wonderful woman. She oozes integrity and love, and though I know what will happen – I find myself praying silently, hoping there might be redemption for Victor and that both might find happiness. Now I am delusional, kind reader.

The instant after Victor runs out to hunt the enemy down Elizabeth is at the mercy of the Creature. I almost scream as he springs from inside the bed – what a moment! I have not noticed that he was hiding beneath the sheets.

 

It’s a rather long scene, too long… and intensely disturbing. Even more so, as it takes a sweet course at first with Elizabeth overcoming her initial fear only to offer to be the Creature’s friend. It dawns on her that Victor did not exaggerate. He did, indeed, build a man. Elizabeth listens with an open heart, moved by the hideousness of the Creature and his timid attempts to establish contact with her. She does not react to the Creature’s ironic remarks (Give voice to the oppressed!), because, I believe, she wishes to offer him only kindness and to be able to do that she can’t expect anything else from him. It’s unspeakably tragic how wrong she is.

 

Creature:            Tonight I have met someone – perfect. Thank you for trying to understand. But he broke his promise. So I break mine. I am truly sorry, Elizabeth.

Though her survival instinct finally takes over, she can’t flee. The Creature grabs her, drags her back to the bed and rapes her. Oh, yes, he has, indeed, learned a lot about the cruelty of man. He doesn’t merely kill her, no, he has to wound her in the worst way possible. His revenge couldn’t be more complete.

Victor, again, is too late. He rushes in just in time to witness this savagely shocking picture and to hear Elizabeth scream his name in a manner that freezes my blood. Victor is equally frozen as he falls to the floor, gun in hand, incapable of placing a shot. There is a moment of unbearable silence and the sound of Elizabeth’s breaking neck still lingers…  

I can hardly believe my eyes. My hands are shaking, and tears streaming down my face.

As Victor’s scientist persona takes over – a welcome defence mechanism that allows him to deal, somewhat, with this impossible situation – I fear for a moment that we are about to witness a similar scene as the one in Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein. There, Victor revives his bride, only to lose her again in a dreadful way. Here, though, Victor is prevented by his determined father who has long lost hope as he feels to have lost his son.

He will lose him now. Victor can’t go back. He must find the Creature, he only lives now for his destruction. They meet again in the Arctic after a long pursuit across the Black Sea, through Tartary and Russia. Victor has exhausted his means and struggles, frostbitten, to keep up with the Creature who keeps taunting him. Alas, there is hardly any strength left in his bones, and as Victor collapses, the Creature’s mockery becomes frightened worry and he tenderly cradles his maker like a child.

 

Creature:            Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone. You and I, we are one. While you live, I live. When you are gone, I must go too. Master, what is death? What will it feel like? Can I die? (…) All I wanted was your love. I would have loved you with all my heart. My poor creator. (Victor suddenly revives) Master! You do love me! You do!

Victor:                 I don’t know what love is.

These are father and son. A twisted and painful relationship. Both emotionally chipped, and more similar than either believed possible. Again the profound sense of loneliness which has drifted through the whole play envelops both.

Victor:                 Every chance I had of love, I threw away. Every shred of human warmth I cut to pieces. Hatred is what I understand.

Both men encountered chances of love, warmth, proximity of another person, peace and were incapable of using them. The intense sadness of this play holds me in its tight grip. And I need a moment to gather my wits.  

Nothing is forever in the theatre. Whatever it is, it’s here, it flares up, burns hot and it’s gone.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, All About Eve 

In the surge of applause I become aware – again – what a magnificent, hot-burning piece of theatre I have just seen. I need a while to crawl through the density of emotions I have witnessed and experienced. The magic of theatre – words spoken by gifted actors transform the stage and you enter a world which is simultaneously alien and familiar.

Though I am well acquainted with Mary Shelley’s novel and many films dealing with this particular subject, nothing prepared me for this unique production. Despite my previous knowledge of the material’s innate tragedy, Danny Boyle’s version took me by surprise more than once, and I have no words to thank this ingenious artist for his vision of alternating the lead roles.

You rarely see the same role interpreted by different actors and it’s a fabulous experience. I am always fascinated by the nuances an actor brings to a part, what he uses to breathe life into words, which movements he chooses, what he’s capable of doing with his voice. In short, I appreciate good acting. I love to feel how an actor draws me into a character’s story and holds me there firmly for two or three hours. For me, it’s one of the greatest pleasures in life. There are others, of course, but the theatre holds a very special place in my soul – and it always will.

 

The production team found two extraordinarily gifted actors for this particular piece – Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch. Their chemistry on stage is amazingly stimulating. And – tremendously important for an actor – they actually listen to each other. It’s not merely the reproduction of memorized lines on cue, you can see them react exactly to what the other says in word or gesture, and I’m in theatre heaven when I notice that kind of skill.

It’s close to impossible to compare the two men. Both approach the characters, Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, differently, and both deliver marvellous performances.

Mr Miller brings many infectiously cute movements you find with babies (like putting his toe in his mouth) to his interpretation of the Creature, but also unbearable menace – in the rape scene he is violently distressing. He is full of contradictions – and thereby very human – in this role which culminates in the final scene. A mocking, cruel Creature, clearly feeling superior to Frankenstein… crumbles to a forlorn child upon fearing that his maker had died and left him alone. It’s heart-breaking to watch him desperately trying to revive Victor, and all his terrible deeds are forgotten at this moment…

 

As Frankenstein, Mr Miller is cold and calculating, obsessed with science, a man eventually trying to hang on to his sanity. With his arrogance he seems to be the villain of the play who eventually falls, devastated at the loss of his fiancée (charmingly portrayed by Naomi Harris). Then, his complacency dissolves to sheer despair, and he almost appears delusional as he exclaims ‘My mind is superb!’ It’s an utterly beautiful – and disturbing – performance.

I have to admit, though, that Benedict Cumberbatch stirred me more, as the Creature and as Viktor Frankenstein. His stage presence alone fills the room before he even utters a word, and he moves with the natural grace of a trained dancer or athlete. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, to hear that he hurt himself while trying to get on his feet after being born, as he appears to have delved into that scene with unparalleled passion. With those first minutes his performance slips under my skin.

With many years of ballet in my background, I tend to look at physical scenes like that with a dancer’s eye and I see the training the scene requires, the determination and discipline to produce movements as arduous as we see on stage, and I am in awe.

As the Creature he is pitiful and frightening in his mercurial reactions. With De Lacey’s guidance (most beautifully acted by the lovely Karl Johnson) he gains integrity which he allows to be manipulated by his experiences. It can hardly be disputed that the Creature – from an actor’s point of view – is Frankenstein’s most challenging figure. It takes a lot of guts and skill and charisma to tread the fine line of being unbelievably appealing and utterly appalling within the same role. Mr Cumberbatch masters this task wonderfully, managing to never lose the audience’s sympathies despite the atrocities the Creature commits.

As Frankenstein he is peculiarly endearing to me. A man of fierce intellect, yet unable to establish any meaningful contact with another human being. This man, this genius, yearns to go further, to best death itself but is, in the end, tragically so, a man weakened physically and spiritually, out of joint with his family and his fiancée. We find all of that in Mr Cumberbatch’s performance, and so much more. He is particularly gripping and unnerving when telling Elizabeth (prior to his departure for Scotland) that she will make a beautiful wife (while examining her arm as if considering her to be a specimen), then incredibly tender in his reaction to her generous acceptance of his task.

In the hands of a lesser actor the character of Frankenstein could have remained a one-dimensional figure. Mr Cumberbatch delivers an elegant, multi-facetted, at times quietly revelatory, performance of a tormented man. He is happiest carving up bodies, yet longing for a loving home and incapable of achieving it. He is solitary. Like the moon.

It’s intriguing how gestures of the Creature found their way into Mr Cumberbatch’s Frankenstein and vice versa (a phenomenon I also observed with Mr Miller), which enhanced the idea of them being two sides of one coin.

The talent of being able to make a person’s inner life available to an audience is a gift you are either born with or not. It’s not an achievement. It is grace. And then the actor’s training and work begin. I must say that I love the quality of a well-trained actor’s voice, and I admire what Mr Cumberbatch is able to convey with his voice alone. From the infant-like babble and slurred attempts to form vowels to the verbal jousting in the last third of the play, he is in control of his voice and his words, and I am completely absorbed by this man’s unique ability.

I love performances that challenge an audience – and Frankenstein does it in the most impressive and mesmerizing manner. Furthermore, the performances here are undoubtedly some of the boldest I’ve ever seen. There has been much ado about the actors being naked on stage. Both actors portraying the Creature and Andreea Padurariu, the female creature. In the version I have enjoyed at the cinema they are not. My guess is that the production allowed the actors some clothing to cover their intimate parts for the live broadcast. During a theatre performance there is an inherent distance between actors on stage and the audience. Though this distance can be quite short at the National, it’s still there. The moment a camera captures the performance, this protective distance dissolves into merciless close-ups and I’m glad the actors didn’t have to go there.

I am very grateful that I had the chance of watching Frankenstein via NT live, but I have to admit that I understand why there won’t be a dvd release of the production. Theatre is a snap shot, really. It happens in the very moment on stage. ‘It’s here, it flares up, burns hot and it’s gone.’ Everything, lights, sound, make-up, etc. are designed for the stage and the auditorium in the house. It can’t be transferred to a TV screen, as that would require a different approach to the medium.

Frankenstein belongs in a theatre. There it is a most glorious event, a raging tumult of emotion, utterly captivating. A fabulous composition of acting talent, haunting music, excellent visual effects, convincing staging, outstanding timing and superb choreography. I have rarely experienced a play so visceral, displaying a variety of human conditions without dwelling on a particular one, and asking philosophical questions – is it a metaphor for the contest between science and religion, embodied by one man’s pursuit to wield the power of God? A thesis on the nature of good and evil – and prejudice? A study on parental obligation? An allegory for the arrogance of unethical science? A mirror of Mary Shelley’s personal life of emotional turmoil? It is all that and everything else you might find there. There is room for interpretation. This play owns all the qualities of a classic theatre piece. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if it returned to the stage again.

 

Recommendations for further reading:

Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein

Dear, Nick: Frankenstein. Play based on the novel by Mary Shelley

Florescu, Radu: In Search of Frankenstein

Hay, Daisy: Young Romantics – the Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives

Hoobler, Dorothy & Thomas: The Monsters. Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein

Holmes, Richard: The Age of Wonder. How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

Seymour, Miranda: Mary Shelley

Tomalin, Claire: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft

 

 

No copyright infringement was intended by this. Copyrights for all mentioned characters, quotes and for all used pictures belong to their respected owners.