Film Review | Frankenstein

I know what you’re thinking. Frankenstein is a theatrical production, and a review of Danny Boyle and Nick Dear’s take on Mary Shelley’s classic gothic horror-cum-science fiction tale has no place on a film page.

But the fact is that this new play – transmitted live to St James Cavalier on Thursday night, from the National Theatre on London’s South Bank – comes to us in an undeniably cinematic form.

For as great as it is that we can get to see such productions at the same time as British audiences – thanks to the NT Live initiative launched a couple of years ago with the Helen Mirren-starring Phedre – the technology, and indeed the artistic techniques, that make the experience more than just televised theatre owe more to the advancements in the field of cinema, and have little to do with the intrinsic rawness of the live theatrical experience.

The picture is delivered to us in crisp High Definition, and we’re regaled with close-ups and clever editing that the audiences at the National can only get at if they use their imagination.

Add to this the fact that it’s brought to life by Trainspotting-Slumdog Millionaire-127 Hours director Boyle, whose theatrical experience served merely as a stepping stone to an illustrious career in Transatlantic cinema, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a fine night at the movies.

These transmissions make for a hybrid genre. Which is oddly appropriate for a treatment of one of the most famous hybrids in popular imagination.

Another distinguishing feature of this high-profile piece of dark spectacle is that the two leads – Benedict Cumberbatch (BBC’s Sherlock) and Jonny Lee Miller (famous for Hackers, Trainspotting… and for being Angelina Jolie’s ex) – alternate the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature each night.

Thursday night’s premiere featured Miller as Victor and Cumberbatch as the Creature, with whom we spend the first chunk of the play. The opening offers us an unflinching glimpse at the Creature’s birth pangs, as an almost-naked and grotesquely made up Cumberbatch painfully tries to teach himself that basic human trait of standing up straight.

In a behind-the-scenes featurette that preceded the production, Cumberbatch spoke about how he observed stroke victims in recovery as part of his research, and with that in mind, the opening gains a particular poignancy: the grotesque acrobatics are painful to watch but, at the same time, quite endearing.  

And while the scene remains a high point of the production (sadly enough), the strength of Cumberbatch’s performance is enough to see the whole unwieldy show through.

From then onwards, the show (and it remains very much a show till the very end of its interval-free, two-hour running time) takes on the guise of an unashamed spectacle.

The ever-present trope of electricity and lightning (absent from Shelley’s novel but present in most incarnations of the story since) is brought to life by a dazzling arrangement of bulbs hung above the stage.

And after the Creature, rejected by his creator, escapes to the outside world, he is nearly trampled by a passing train populated by what we can assume are Northern labourers… who without warning jump out of the vehicle and form a single file, to burst into rowdy pub song.

This kind of spontaneous, incongruous genre-hopping remains a staple of the production and while the constituent scenes in themselves are mesmerising to watch, there is a lack of cohesion throughout. In a way this is very Boyle: recall Trainspotting’s chaotic canvas, and his sprucing up of the otherwise static story of 127 Hours.

Once you acknowledge that the whole thing will be far from subtle or deep, you should enjoy the ride.

On basic script level, Dear dedicates more attention to the interaction between Frankenstein and the Creature. Miller proves to be a solid sparring partner to his creation (endowed with speech and rational inquisitiveness thanks to the efforts of a kindly blind scholar-turned-farmer De Lacey, played by Karl Johnson), and while he convinces as a driven scientist figure, it is clear that he more than relishes Frankenstein’s darker side.

Not only does he fail to take responsibility for the Creature’s life, but rails against his creation with a rage that is almost sadistic (perhaps here, Miller was channelling the villainous Jordan Chase, whom he played in the latest season of the hit TV drama Dexter).

Either way, seeing the switch would be interesting.

The leads are somewhat hampered by a weak set of supporting characters. Frankenstein’s father Alphonse is played with an awkward stentorian poise by George Harris and his fiancé Elizabeth (Naomie Harris) doesn’t exactly succeed in creating an emotional backbone for the piece.

But when you have so much thrown into the pot – visually, dramatically… even choreographically – one element going wrong is merely a tiny quiver of a complaint: there is no whole to disturb.

Much like the source novel, Frankenstein is an assault on the senses and the mind: it cudgels you with ominous ideas about where we’re all heading as a species, and forces you to sympathise with characters that you might not have given the time of day otherwise.

Again, like Shelley’s (and Frankenstein’s!) fevered creation, it’s a bit of an incongruous beast – the troubled authress was 18 when she wrote it, and we all remember what a tumultuous age that is.

The production premiered with a live screening at the St James Cavalier Cinema last Thursday, with Jonny Lee Miller as Victor and Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature. This version will be repeated on March 27 at 19:00 and April 2 at 20:00.
The alternate version will be screened on March 24 at 20:00, April 8 and 29 at 20:00 and April 17 at 19:15.

Tickets are at €10. They can be booked by calling 21223200 or by logging on to https://ticketengine.sjcav.org/