Danny Boyle’s lavish production of Frankenstein (a bold adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original novel, penned by Nick Dear) lives or dies on the strength of its two alternating lead performances, in this case Benedict Cumberbatch’s arrogant Victor and Johnny Lee Miller’s wretched, embittered Creature. Though the play is hampered by the occasional grating issue with script and supporting cast, these ferociously impressive leads ensure a memorable and ultimately satisfying experience.
Shedding the cumbersome framing devices of the novel, Dear has written the play as very much the Creature’s story rather than Victor’s, beginning not with the driven scientist’s first experiments but with the Creature’s tortured first moments of consciousness. Miller rises to the occasion, bringing an energetic physicality to the role that demands fascinated attention. The extended opening sequence, in which he struggles pitifully to figure out the use of his limbs, writhing, staggering and sobbing with frustration, make you yearn for someone to step in and help him, to coax him through his initial terror and confusion. All he gets, however, is a fleeting appearance by Frankenstein himself, who reacts with panicked revulsion and spurns him, driving him out into the world. After a series of formative experiences, some tender, usually harrowing, the Creature returns for a reckoning, its motor skills now advanced enough to give it the threatening agility of an ape.
Miller’s use of speech shines too, as his awkward, halting tones, seemingly straining to escape his throat even as his intelligence soars, invoke vast pathos, whether yearning for a mate or brooding on the cruelty of his unnatural existence. It is a wrenching, arresting performance.
As for Frankenstein himself, Cumberbatch makes him a monster, a man of towering vanity and callousness who ironically could learn a few lessons in humanity from his inhuman creation. A truly villainous Frankenstein has precedent in the murderous Peter Cushing version, but Cumberbatch’s steely confidence and crippled emotional life (there is genuine bitterness in his voice when he questions the Creature about its feelings of love) make him both impressive and pitiful while remaining an utter cad. The role is less meaty than that of the Creature, with Victor absent for a sizeable stretch of time, and the roots of his character are given less exploration, but Cumberbatch holds his own.
Unfortunately, in comparison to the leads the supporting cast are reduced to ciphers, with the honourable exception of Karl Johnson, who plays the role of the blind old exile who educates the Creature (before their relationship is cut tragically short) with paternal warmth. The script is also hit-and-miss. There are clumsy moments, such as when Frankenstein’s pure, bland, boring bride Elizabeth lectures him on his interference with “the natural order”, in a painfully unnecessary spelling out of the novel’s most famous theme. When she berates her husband for “trying God’s work” it’s difficult not to suppress an irritated sigh at the redundancy of the rebuke; Cumberbatch’s performance has already succeeded at putting across Victor’s blasphemous enthusiasm.
The production values are suitably memorable, somehow simultaneously grand and understated, rolling out a mock steam train with a hideous industrial cacophony one minute, and efficiently evoking the beauty of nature with little more than a strip of grass the next. It also sports perhaps one of the most ambitious and effective uses of atmospheric lighting to be attempted on stage recently.
Overall the production sports genuine substance underneath all the directorial flash, staying remarkably faithful to the spirit of Shelley’s words, albeit sometimes awkwardly expressed. It may not be well-rounded enough to qualify as a genuine masterpiece, but is certainly worth watching for the bravura acting of its leads, who summon up a duality of fascinated enmity and grotesquely oversized passions.
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