The biggest theatrical event of 2011 - in Britain anyway - is based around an Academy-Award winning director retelling one of the most recycled tales of all time. Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein, based on a play by Nick Dear, will please some of the following people:
Traditionalists
Dear confronts many of aspects of Mary Shelley’s story in his screenplay - Dr F and his creation are not transported to the 21st century place where Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss dragged Sherlock. The concept of the two as co-dependents (the staple incidentally of many a sitcom from Steptoe & Son to David Brent and his staff) remains. As is the out-of-control monster, echoes of Paradise Lost, the locations of the North Pole, Orkney and Geneva, and the cold parental presence as drawn by Shelley, and most of all the searing pain of loss. All are present and correct here.
Film fans
The National Theatre are simulcasting performances in cinemas in the US and around the UK as they did when Helen Mirren graced its stage in Racine’s Phedre, and when they ‘screened’ Alan Bennett’s last play The Habit of Art. No cinemas in Stromness has signed up for Frankenstein yet. Cinemagoers will have a chance to see both principle actors play the roles of doctor and creation on 17th and 24th March.
Fans of Benedict Cumberbatch & Jonny Lee Miller
Benedict Cumberbatch’s rise to prominence has burnt slowly in roles on TV and film until catching fire over the past 18 months with his role as Sherlock, and a part in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of National mega-hit War Horse. Boyle and Jonny Lee Miller’s first collaboration since Trainspotting displays the versatility of the first Mr Angelina Jolie. After the wisecracking Sick Boy, the conflicted George Michael fan in Eli Stone, the last series of serial killer drama Dexter and our own Graeme Obree, the very physical demands of The Creature see yet another side to him.
Repeat attenders
On the night I attended, Cumberbatch was playing Dr Frankenstein with Lee Miller as the creature. As the parts are strikingly different, either viewing of the play would be too. Just as cinemagoers went twice to Christopher Nolan’s Inception, so theatre audiences may well want to see two actors each play very contrasting roles.
National Theatre admirers
Platforms have been organised around this play, on Mary Shelley’s character, Damage author Josephine Hart looking at the poetry of the time, Dear and Boyle talking about the adaptation, particle physicist Professor Brian Cox’s look at the science around it, and critic Kim Newman looking at the other film depictions of Frankenstein’s monster.
For those not planning on travelling to London currently grumbling, the platforms are unlikely to go on tour but many of the National’s productions do - even to Luxembourg.
Producers
The film rights for Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon were snapped up when Apollo 13 director Ron Howard saw it on the Donmar Warehouse stage in London’s Covent Garden.
Kenneth Branagh, Robert De Niro and Helena Bonham Carter had a go in 1994 and of course Boris Karloff in James Whale’s 1931 but with Boyle’s track record, you’d predict movie moguls will be sniffing around options here.
Not everyone will fall for Frankenstein. One of Danny Boyle’s trademarks in his films is a kinetic energy. Action, normally one of Boyle’s strong suits, is not that obvious here. The play takes half an hour to get going and as it doesn’t employ an interval, it lacks aspects of cliffhanger potential, theatrical acts employ. Horror. an expected part of the Frankenstein story, is in short supply too. There are only a couple of jump-out-the-seat moments.
The dialogue takes third place to the suspense and Mark Tildesley’s design and the performances of Lee Miller and Cumberbatch.
The music from Karl Hyde of Underworld is understated to the point of being hidden. Having said all that, Frankenstein is almost certainly a (sorry) monster hit and a superior piece of commercial entertainment. Whether London’s regularly picky theatre critics, who wield scalpels sharper than any owned by Dr Victor, will love it is more doubtful. Like the doc’s creation, many will not be able to take their eyes away from it but it is certainly not without its rougher features.
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