Imitating the Dog, a company known for weaving live theatre seamlessly with digital invention, have been on a fascinating journey over the past four years, exploring stories of the undead. It began in 2020 with a revolutionary version of Night of the Living Dead, George A Romero’s definitive zombie movie, and now, via Dracula (2021) and Macbeth (2023), culminates with perhaps the ultimate undead creature in this new telling of Mary Shelley’s extraordinary work.
But unlike the company’s previous work reanimating the dead over the past half-decade, here there are no live cameras on stage. You may or may not not miss the trademark Imitating the Dog symbiosis of live action and live film-making – and there is still plenty of digital innovation to fascinate, among Hayley Grindle’s impressive set. But you will likely miss the narrative clarity that the company mastered in previous productions, but which is less evident this time.
Here Shelley’s tale becomes a Radio 4 drama; the shipping forecast is an amusing detail providing a bridge between our two worlds: the contemporary, and life aboard Robert Walton’s ship of the novel.
Listening to the audio drama are a young couple who are about to create life of their own, having unexpectedly conceived. The unnamed couple, played with muscular physicality by Georgia-Mae Myers and Nedum Okonyia, tell their stories as parents-to-be grappling with the responsibility of bringing life into the world, as well as the narrated story of Victor Frankenstein doing the same.
As the young couple they are naturalistic – Myers in particular is an impressively confident watch – but in the Shelley story their style is heightened, physical. It makes for an incredibly striking piece of theatre, but a sometimes too disorientating one. The narrative can be at once too laboured and too obscure. As the young expectant couple watch a homeless man, abandoned by society, the parallels with Frankenstein’s creature feel heavy-handed, yet when the Shelley narrative is told through choreography, the story becomes a little too opaque.
As part of a body of recent work this is a fascinating addition, but judged on its own merits, it needed stitching together a little more coherently.
• At Leeds Playhouse until 24 February, then touring
