Mary Shelley’s modern Prometheus, Frankenstein’s Creature, has been brought to life on the stage and on screens both small and large for almost ninety years.
In anticipation of The Adelaide Repertory Theatre's new production, their monster, Steve Parker, speaks.
The Creature has been portrayed by Karloff and Cumberbatch, De Niro and the dad from 'Everybody Loves Raymond'. Artists have rendered the creation sympathetically, as in TV hit 'Penny Dreadful', and comedically, as in 'The Munsters' and 'Young Frankenstein', but most regularly, he has been an object of horror. Nick Dear’s 2011 stage adaptation, to be performed by The Rep, has transplanted the narrator’s head; It is a play told from the Creature’s perspective, not Dr Frankenstein’s. Steve believes that this has transformed the key themes of the work.
“In the early days, there was a big religious theme which is possibly not so important any more. Initially there was the 'don’t try and be God' [central] theme. Victor Frankenstein was being punished for essentially trying to be God; we don’t really care about that too much in 2018, so things have been changed around a bit to a more humanist angle which I enjoy.”
“We tend to judge things very quickly on a gut reaction and almost everybody who sees the creature in the play, the immediate reaction is so bad that his character is formed or warped by that.”
It is, then, a work that promotes tolerance, by emphasising what a crippling force intolerance can be. Heckling those that threaten or horrify your sense of what is normal can have personality-altering implications for the recipient, as Steve illustrates.
“To you it might be a 30 second reaction of yelling out something abusive but to that person who has actually received it, It’s a life-changing thing and it will affect their lifespan.”
While it is a work that seeks to evoke empathy towards the Creature, it does not retreat from the horror contained in the source text. In fact, this version is a gruesome, violent and sex-laden incarnation that may challenge The Rep’s traditional audience. As Steve explains, this has been a conscious artistic shift for the company.
“They have had a bit of a reputation in the past for being a little conservative, just because of their established audience, but they’ve recently been really trying to break out of that and I think this is a very strong play for them to lead with this year with its very strong themes and its nudity and violence and sex scenes.”
Audiences will have the opportunity to be jolted into life this April.
