Review: Frankenstein

Frankenstein has been given all the elements to lure its audience. Its Hollywood Director, high profile cast and a literary classic guaranteed a sell-out and places a huge amount of pressure on the play. With the bar set so high, doubts if Frankenstein could possibly meet the high expectations of Boyle and his cast were understandable –  yet the National’s latest play delivers. With the fantastic staging, dialogue and quality of performance, Frankenstein represents the National at its best.

BBC’s Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, known most recently for his role in Dexter, are the show’s stars. Both alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his creation each evening and, after witnessing Cumberbatch’s performance, this isn’t surprising. His interpretation of the monster was so physical just watching him was exhausting. The first scene set the tone for the kind of character Cumberbatch had created where he was “born” on stage.  Witnessing the creature coming to grips with his own being and dexterity was slightly uncomfortable to witness as Cumberbatch twitches and contorts as he uses his body for the first time. Discomfort in the unnatural, but awareness of the monsters vulnerability, was something Nick Dear’s script focused on throughout the play. The creature’s journey into human society and rejection from it successfully evokes sympathy from the audience. Even during the monster’s murderous decent, those who watched do feel like his actions were prompted from sorrowful isolation driving him into a pit of anguish making the climax of the story, ensuing in a rape, almost justifiable.

Mary Shelly supposedly dubbed her monster “Adam”, and although this remained absent in the play, the element of creation and finding the purpose in life made this name fitting. While the creature learns of the world around him he asks “what is love”, questions why people do good and bad things and confronts ideas on wealth and fair society. The script’s conversion of these ideas gives an insight into the fundamental foundations of the human condition. Despite Victor Frankenstein’s character remaining slightly undeveloped, Miller didn’t feature in the play until halfway through, the scenes between the creation and it’s creator was touching. The audience witnesses the creature’s pure desire for affection and love and Frankenstein’s terror and intrigue within his monster. Dear’s adaptation of Shelly’s book has kept a lot of the original dialogue from the monster’s first person account, making the speech both eloquent and moving. This kept a feel of the original texts, although this was sometimes at odds with the modern injection of humor now and again.

The Olivier Theatre remains to be one of the most exciting spaces to stage a play and as usual it didn’t disappoint. The theatre had been transformed into an eerie cross between the grey concrete of a basement laboratory and scaffolding poles of a city or rural countryside. Suspended above the audience hung a huge mirror with hundreds of assorted light bulbs glowing from it. These provided a variety of effects through the show, creating thunderstorms and explosions. During the play the creature is exposed to all four elements as he is shunned from society and the recreation of fire, wind and rain on stage interacted well with the idea of man in his primacy, brought to life by Cumberbatch’s childlike joy at the sun rising after a storm.

Despite the flamboyant films of Danny Boyle, Frankenstein didn’t possess as much Brechtian flare as I expected: however the direction didn’t overshadow the content of the play, complimenting the actors and the script. Boyle has carefully brought together all the right components to construct exactly what everyone anticipating Frankenstein was hoping for.

On the 17th and 24th of March Frankenstein will screen in cinemas nationwide

Words by alice lewis