Where this really succeeded was the production elements – it was both expensively extravagant and impressively creative. Moment to moment it took me by surprise, often making me gasp with delight at what they were achieving and there are still some effects that I have no idea how they achieved (seriously how do they get the Creature into the womb at the beginning).
One of the other successes, I think, is that they’ve managed to make this from start to finish feel like an event, that’s something I don’t feel often anymore given how much theatre I go to. Whether it was something relatively simple like the actor ringing of the bell as the audience entered to something utterly grand like the entrance of the train (I still have no idea why the train was there and I’m still not sure it really fit the tone of the rest but it was certainly dramatic) – everything was designed to create impact for the audience.
The use of the Olivier revolve, the best I’ve so far seen, also allowed for impressive effects (as well as reasonably smooth scene changes) – whether it was the revelation of the grand mansion house with it’s mirror image of the creepy hovel behind or the very real sense it gave you of the cliff top where Frankenstein and his Creature first meet and the gaping space behind it. It was all very epic and very filmic. Best of all though each of these effects were used with purpose – each creating a different emotional response for the audience – certain moments, even relatively simple ones, completely resonated with me and have stayed with me since. A prime example being the birds flying upwards into the sunset.
On top of all which we enjoyed some of the best lighting, designed by Bruno Poet, I have ever had the joy of seeing. Truly remarkable, particularly against the vast slightly overwhelming space of the Olivier which I’ve seen dwarf other productions. It’s hard to capture just how good the lighting was – but I have never seen anything nearly as impressive or creative as the vast array of lightbulbs, suspended above the audience and used to create the sensation of lightning, before. Completely incredible.
The acting too was generally excellent, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature giving a surely award-winning performance. Spell binding from start to finish. I was less convinced by Johnny Lee Miller as Frankenstein and found Naomi Harris as Elizabeth frequently frustrating, but in both cases I think this had more to do with the writing than with their performances.
Unfortunately, it was the writing that really made this fall apart for me. Sometimes it was simply the choices that it made that I found difficult – for example, Victor not being established for so long in the piece felt very awkward to me, I would have liked to have got a sense at least of the moral and technical problems he faced in creating his first Creature – though I can understand the desire to start with the much more dramatically pleasing “birth”. In other ways though the dialogue simply sounded clunky and unrealistic, whilst the characters lacked depth and layers. It also made it difficult for me to form a strong emotional connection to any of the characters, which meant the ending lacked any real power for me and I felt that by that point the production had lost momentum.
I also found the portrayal of the Bride deeply problematic, though for a while I found it difficult to quantify why. Mostly I think it was the nudity – although looked at one way both male and female nudity were treated equally by the piece, in practice that’s not the way it felt to me. Yes, there were both fully nude – but the Creature was constantly moving, frequently facing the back of the stage or far upstage whilst the Bride was stood still for a long stretch facing the audience. More than that though, the Creature was a fully realised character – he had development, a character journey and was allowed to vocalise – his nudity was also logical from the script point of view and had a plot motivation. The Bride was allowed none of these things, she was simply there to be stared at and her nudity felt to me gratuitous. These are all relatively subtle differences but they are ones that I see repeated through all sorts of media and it utterly maddens me and completely threw me out of the story.
So I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this one – some things were jaw droppingly good and others were jaw droppingly bad – and I’ll be interested to see if my impression of these things alters when I see the play again with the alternate casting in May.
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