Frankenstein: dir. Danny Boyle.
Broadway cinema: Nottingham, 19th March 2011
Review by Julia Pirie
At the beginning the vast Olivier stage is lit by a galaxy of electric bulbs. Soft electronic music pulses gentle heart-beats. Something is stirring within the back-lit membrane of a large ovoid structure stage-left. A hand, perhaps an elbow pushes out and is withdrawn. The process is repeated until, with a gash of lightning and a crack of thunder, the membrane splits to eject The Creature, recognisable as a fully- formed new-born man.
God created the world in six days. For at least as many minutes we watch as Frankenstein’s fish-like being wriggles, flops, rises and falls, crawls and collapses, struggling to get a foothold on the earth. Finally with a howl of triumph, The Creature stands up to meet his maker.
It’s breathtaking, but is it theatre?
Seeing Nick Dear’s play of Frankenstein at Nottingham’s Broadway cinema was my first experience of the NT Live project. This adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel was a repeat of the previous Thursday’s live performance streamed from The National to cinemas around the world.
The play focuses on creator and created. Dear calls Frankenstein’s invention The Creature, not The Monster. Enhanced by Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternating in the lead roles, Boyle explores concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil – themes as relevant to us as they were in 1818.
Cumberbatch and Miller are a strong team. Even through celluloid, their tragic story of loneliness played out across Mark Tildesley’s spectacular set, holds you to its bitter, cold end. Karl Johnson as de Lacey is superb; Boyle skilfully mixes the humour and pathos of his interplay with the Creature. There’s humour of a grimmer, gothic kind in the Orkney scenes where locals help Frankenstein gather body parts and some use of colourful ensemble playing to establish humans’ general aversion to anything ‘different’.
However, I could never forget the cameras were directing my response. Sometimes – like the crane-shots which rose far above the action to look down on Mankind’s insignificance, or the close-up on Cumberbatch’s foot struggling for purchase on the ground – they enhanced meaning. Sometimes they distracted. The close-up of Cumberbatch tearing up ‘grass’ to eat revealed the matting below and the camera also betrayed the lack of ‘food’ in the cook pot upended in another scene.
I found the supporting actors generally less convincing. Often they weren’t helped by the script but I also wondered whether they (unlike the more experienced screen actors, Cumberbatch and Lee Miller) felt hampered by the unfamiliar presence of cameras watching them work.
At the end there was some rather self-conscious, half-hearted applause; there have been standing ovations in London. Perhaps I was not the only one to feel ambiguous about the project. Yes, NT Live offers accessibility – both in terms of geography and ticket price – but for me the experience was neither theatre nor film. A hybrid, like The Creature – it’ll take some getting used to.