The by-now memetic mansplaining refrain of “Actually, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster” unwittingly tells its own meta-fictional tragic tale of how much true understanding of the original novel by Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter has been lost to the schlock of late-50s Hammer Horror with the passing of years, and how, with it, the voice of Mary Shelley has been stifled, subsumed by a one-note masculine narrative of a mere objectified killer monster on the loose which must be violently destroyed by its male hero creator. There exists a whole host of social and cultural problems with this active sabotage of a woman’s art by what was, and remains, a vastly male industry that has, in essence, stripped her work for parts to profit themselves at market with endless, evermore ridiculous Hollywood sequels getting further and further away from the crucial points being made.
Fortunately, director Danny Boyle’s spectacularly good adaptation of the classic Gothic novel does much to reclaim the work, to restart its deep-probing ethical and moral search, and to begin to restore its feminist foundations, even if its own narrative leaves much still deeply flawed in that way. Dispensing with Victor Frankenstein’s deeply biased male perspective, and telling its story solely as the chronicle of the pitiable, extraordinarily human creature which he selfishly forced into life, the stage show is remarkable for taking great care to properly emphasise the original work’s crucial lessons in morality and ethics, and to put renewed stress on Shelley’s dire warning of the pitfalls of science for its own sake, doing so in a gripping, beautifully-realised, poetic fashion that manages a fabulous trick of simultaneously loosely adapting the novel whilst leveraging the ensuing destructive male saviour narratives of Hammer Horror in its own ingenious, vitally interrogative way. Quite besides that, it is ever-increasingly impossible to ignore the play’s roundabout implication of the terrible, destructive social consequences of birthing an unwanted child one is ill-prepared to raise, which herein fall, for once in history, on a man.
Indeed, there is much that can be read into playwright Nick Dear’s masterful, multi-faceted, beautiful scriptwriting, almost a guided tour of the most vital English literary and poetic history which is itself often movingly poetic, and which soars to lyrical, literary heights of insight into the human condition as all the best of the Victorian novels did. It charts a course straight back to the heart of Mary Shelley’s writing and ever more close to home, demanding to know who is it that gets to define what is ‘other’ and why, and what makes a monster, or a human being, and what lies in the ill-defined spaces between them.
The line between monster and man is, as is the particular USP of this production, blurred further still by the main roles of Frankenstein and the Creature being swapped nightly between leads Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee-Miller, whom each deliver their own unique takes on the respective roles. Cumberbatch gives an outstanding physical performance in his turn as The Creature, perfectly capturing the hyperactive, unfettered wonder and energy of a newborn child, and growing into a heartbreakingly embittered and damaged man who can never quite be fully formed. Johnny Lee-Miller makes a fine Frankenstein alongside him, his incarnation seemingly marked by a deep need for the illusion of his own superiority which motivates him to invest a great deal of intelligence in ignorance of the consequences of his actions. Indeed, it follows that there is much appalling ignorance poorly masked by his brilliant intelligence, and a lack of the most basic humanity disguised by so-called civility, very well performed by Lee-Miller in his turn.
By contrast, Lee-Miller feels somewhat derivative and ill-fitting as the Creature. His incarnation, based on his own very young (at the time) son, is closer to a child than Cumberbatch, who, by stark contrast, approaches it as a disabled adult tasked with rediscovering movement, and ultimately humanity, rather than finding it for the first time. Which one proves the favourite will be a matter of per-person preference, but to me, Cumberbatch’s vision feels more authentic to the creature, with its adult body in which movement would be rediscovered and rebuilt rather than formed from scratch.
Lee-Miller seems one-dimensional by comparison, too much like a newborn toddler than a reconstituted man rediscovering himself. It feels oddly inauthentic, as though it suffers for making an arguable pro-choice subtext into text, speaking down to an older audience rather than meeting them on their level. He also introduces vocals to the creature too early, losing some of the tragi-dramatic impact of the creature’s first words being vulgar dismissives in the process, and he seems apart from that almost to too much drag it all out, squandering time, and slowing down the production. Indeed, Lee-Miller seems given over to slightly overplayed melodrama, and even to underplaying moments in both roles, with Cumberbatch more grounded.
Cumberbatch plays Frankenstein as a man hugely taken aback and horrified by what he has accomplished, by the reality of an experiment gone horribly right, and his is a more sympathetic incarnation, if only for not being as given to repulsive lechery as Lee-Miller with the Bride. Regardless, both bring their own unique and compelling takes to the parts, and are worth seeing in each one, though Cumberbatch, being more versatile as a performer, seems to romp home in both leads by virtue of that.
In both versions, amongst the rest of the principle cast, there is a particularly touching and memorable performance from Karl Johnson as the old man De Lacey. George Harris entertains as the Frankenstein family patriarch, bringing a suitably statesmanlike gravitas to his part. Naomie Harris endears as Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor Frankenstein’s wife-to-be, successfully further highlighting the dramatic ironies of the contrast between the Creature and his creator; and John Stahl and Mark Armstrong prove an unexpected highlight as a pair of the mad scientists’ press-ganged assistants, Euan and Raab.
Technically, both versions of the production are a marvel of ingenious staging (customary for the National Theatre’s extraordinarily dynamic space) and artful lighting and set design. A gorgeous Victorian Steampunk aesthetic helps to lend an air of low fantasy, which sharpens rather than softens the hard edge of rage against the myriad evils of men’s unchecked arrogance and vanity which is shot through the reimagined text. The creature’s wretched, tragic existence takes form as a series of tableaus realised in in a succession of literal highlights and lowlights which are consistently enthralling to behold.
One notes that the production has been markedly improved in one the few ways it can be by cutting out its crass, voyeuristic scene of brutal sexual assault. This was never something which needed to be seen, and the production is better for it. Indeed, the play’s female characters do tend to rather get short-shrift here, merely decorating the setting, and motivating the principal men to do their various evil deeds. Others have suggested that it would perhaps have been interesting to see Naomie Harris and Andreea Padurariu swap between brides, if only to give them each more to do, and to reinforce notions of the blur between human and monster, but the thought seems to have gone that it would distract from the mens’ stories, which is a whole other tragedy unto itself.
Overall, though, it is clear to see why this is one of the National’s most requested productions for on-demand streaming. Beautiful, poetic, wonderfully performed, and boasting a fantastic cast, especially its two endlessly watchable leads. There is, it has been said, something Beckettian about them. Two intertwined lives defined by a vicious, unending cycle of human misery and failure, with no option but to fail and fail again. To fail better, until the world ends.
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