The structure of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein has been compared, aptly, to a nest of Russian dolls. A sea captain, writing home to his sister, tells of how, trapped at the north pole, he sights a gigantic figure (who subsequently narrates his own “life” story) crossing the ice by dog-drawn sleigh. Later, the captain rescues an exhausted Dr Frankenstein, who reveals his mission to destroy the “monster”. In this new two-handed stage version, touring theatre company Imitating the Dog, in co-production with Leeds Playhouse, adds another layer to the fiction.
The setting is the present. Hayley Grindle’s set suggests a small flat with a bed, some furniture and a radio set. A young woman shares the result of a pregnancy test with a young man: it’s positive. Over the following months she remains in situ; he comes and goes. Through elliptical dialogue they discuss – or fail to discuss – what it means to give life and whether they should. Suggestions that this joint act of creation risks isolating each in their own psychic reality are highlighted through dance sequences that may – or may not – be intended to reveal characters’ inner feelings (choreography by Casper Dillen).
Interactions between the two are intercut with a Book at Bedtime-style radio broadcast of Frankenstein, which is played out by the two performers (focused physicality from Georgia-Mae Myers and Nedum Okonyia). As is to be expected from this company, known for its imaginative and adept fusion of live performance with digital technology, the visual effects are stunning. Projections obliterate the domestic setting: opening on to snowstorm-swirled spaces; picturing laboratory paraphernalia; seeming to open a ribcage.
Where Shelley’s creature is an embodiment of the political and social ideas of the time, though, the modern-day couple’s horizons appear bounded by the walls of their flat, disconnected from any wider experiences. Potentially interesting associations between the gestation of the child in the woman’s womb and Frankenstein’s animation of lifeless limbs are suggested but not explored.
An attempt to connect the drama to the realities of our world feels contrived. The pair develop a voyeuristic interest in a homeless man, seemingly living on the street, some floors below their window. He is persecuted by unknown oppressors and, for a while, disappears. When he returns, the couple become concerned about his welfare and take him some food. The idea that this man might need shelter from the freezing weather appears not to occur to either of them. He dies of cold, having fulfilled his offstage function: to prompt anxieties about parental responsibilities for the fate of a child, once born.
In vintage Imitating the Dog, co-creations of its three co-artistic directors, Pete Brooks, Andrew Quick and Simon Wainwright, the technological wizardry electrifies the action. Here, it comes across as video decoration, trying to animate an assemblage of promising ideas that never quite thrill to dramatic life.
