Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature
Johnny Lee Miller as the Doctor
Run Time: 2 hours, 1 minute
Link: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/nt-at-home-frankenstein
Synopsis
We begin with a giant “egg” on the stage, and we can see movement within. There’s a bit of a lightshow and the monster is “born.” He flops and convulses around the stage for several minutes with no one there to help him. He flops around for eleven straight minutes until Dr. Frankenstein come in and finds him and then runs away.
A bunch of guys come in on a steampunk train and start singing. They beat up the monster and then drive off again. Some grass appears and the monster rolls around and eats dirt for a while. Twenty minutes in, a couple of travelers come across the monster and run away.
The creature comes across an old blind man who become his friend. The creature learns to read and think with the old man, but his son runs the creature off.
He then meets a young boy named William who says his own name is Frankenstein; he’s Victor’s brother. The monster grabs him and goes to hide. After a search, they find William dead in a boat.
The doctor and the monster finally confront each other. The creature wants a female. Victor refuses, and the creature says he’ll regret the decision. After some wrangling, Victor agrees to try. After much grave robbing and speechmaking, he’s nearing the end of his work. He has a change of heart and destroys the woman creature.
Victor is soon to be married, and the monster plans to wreck things. The creature goes to Elizabeth, who isn’t afraid of him and offers to be his friend. He apologizes and then kills her.
Victor chases the monster north through many lands, up to the arctic. The show ends with the eternal pursuit…
Commentary
I first started watching the clock at 7 minutes in when he was still rolling around on the floor. At nine minutes in, he finally stands up for the first time. Twenty minutes in, he was eating dirt. It’s painfully slow, especially in the beginning. It did pick up as it went along, but the first fifteen minutes had me ready to turn it off.
There’s a lot of “acting” going on here, and I can see why theater buffs and critics say the performances are excellent, but I’m a horror fan, and there’s really not much of that here. It’s a lot of talk and philosophy, which of course is the heart of the Frankenstein book, but I think a film fan who isn’t really a fan of live plays will find this quite dull. If you’re patient, it is really very good.
I was particularly impressed with the technical aspect of this. The stage itself rotates, opens, and interchangeable parts, and seems to be completely open underneath so they can switch sets beneath the stage and raise them up as needed. The lighting also has a big place in the story, and the occasional light shows are excellent as well. I’m not really a “play person,” but this was technically fascinating.