Stage and Film Review: Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein broadcast live at Silver City from the National Theatre in London

Frankenstein! It doesn’t get better than Frankenstein! Ever since Mary Shelley published her wildly popular eighteenth-century novel, this tale has spawned a plethora of interpretations and offshoots, especially in film. While early film melodrama made something of a camp convention out of the tale, its original text remains iconographic. Kenneth Branagh made some effort to remain loyal to the original tale, but even he could not help the impulse to take some artistic license.

Danny Boyle (creator of 28 Days) has produced a stage version that is spectacular in its effects and absolutely stunning in its performance. In Boyle’s interpretation, the first third of the novel’s original plotline is cut out. Instead, Boyle chooses to begin with the ‘birth’ of the wretch, and he maintains that as his primary perspective throughout. Boyle has his two lead actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, rotate the roles of Victor and The Wretch on alternating nights to focus on their dichotomy as foils: one lusts for social interaction and is unable to participate, the other rejects social interaction and is unwilling to participate; one desires a wife and lover who would surely reject him, the other is blessed with a beautiful and ever-forgiving wife and lover whom he cannot help but reject; one is violently desperate for the love of his maker-father, the other is unable to connect with a father that dotes on him. The racial differentiation between Victor and the actor that plays his father (Victor is white, his father is black) only emphasizes this latter juxtaposition.


But the real story here is the performance. The physical representation of a ‘new’ body is unbelievably convincing and dramatically horrific. The first almost ten minutes of the production are silently but physically acted as The Wretch comes to grips with his new body and the horror of his isolation. Victor only briefly appears in this opening scene to reject him and flee. Nevertheless, Victor is almost as compelling, and I only wish I could have seen a live performance of the next night’s show to see the actors switch roles, borrow from each other’s interpretations, and add their own.

This single live performance will be complemented by an encore live performance broadcast on March 31st at 7:00 PM at both Silver City and Odeon theatres.