**(Some spoilers)** Gothic, imaginative and thrilling production of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. You can see both versions for a short time only - with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his nameless creation, the 'Monster'/Creature. Check out those pre-Olympic Games Danny Boyle produced lights and pre-cauldron 'eggs'.
In a class enquiry of nature versus nurture, the Creature (in this case Benedict Cumberbatch) emerges from a membrane-like egg sack, pulsed with electricity. Toddler-like the Creature learns to stagger, touch, walk and speak; experiencing sensory and socialisation overload, encountering cruel people, the texture of grass, rain, the beauty of the brilliant sun, the joy of movement and the pain and usefulness of fire, not to mention snow, without overarching guidance or parental moral framework.
Encountering a kind tutor and doing kind deeds back, the Creature experiences a ethical dilemma -why does he not have a name? Is he a King? Who are his parents, what is his purpose? Why has he been left like this? Why do people reject him purely on the basis of his looks, as heartlessly as his creator rejected him? Does he have a soul, feelings, memory, and if so, why - what for? What makes a human 'human' and are we born with conscience or do we make it up for ourselves as we go along, cos love is love? Rejected and misunderstood once again, the Creature's moral framework takes a turn for the murderous as he sets fire to the family house of the grandfather sheltering and educating him, and in a revengeful search for his creator, having learnt to read his creator's diary, his creator's little brother.
Elizabeth, played by Naomie Harris, provides the moral challenge and compass. Although uneducated compared to Frankenstein and much neglected by him as an unwanted contractual burden, she has a kind heart, faith, love for others, ethics and morality, compassion, and a healthy dose of scientific curiousity and enquiry. Deeply underestimated by her fiancee, she is soon to become part of a horrific and unexpected scientific experiment of the Creature's devising. Cold and heartless - Frankenstein neglects Elizabeth as much as he neglects his parents, and his parental responsibilities and duty to his Creature. The only time we see passion in Frankenstein is when he is engaged in hunting the Creature or cruelly blocking the Creature's ambitions to have a beautiful wife and be fully, postively human as his creator intended him to be.
Equally revengeful and murderous as his creator now, and armed with his creator's diary (and address!) the Creature pursues Frankenstein on his wedding night as cruelly as Frankenstein obliterated the Creature's dreams of being fully human, understood, no longer alone and domesticated. The Creature surprises Elizabeth violently, but her innate kindness, compassion and good nature kick in - she wants to be an advocate for the Creature and see justice done and wrongs righted; to ensure that Frankenstein will take his parenting and duty of care seriously. Unfortunately, the Creature is no longer negotiating and aims to deprive Frankenstein of his lifelong companion as Frankenstein did to him. I'm thankful that in this screening the attack on Elizabeth was cut and suggested - the full NT Live and encore versions always seem gratuitous and to unpleasantly linger too long in the attack on Elizabeth, making a nonsense of what came before with Elizabeth being shown as a thinking and compassionate agent.
United in hatred, Creature and Frankenstein chase each other across the ice - and yet the Creature is still capable of compassion towards his creator as he appears to stumble, fall and die. The dramatisation ends asking us, the audience, is the child's character solely the responsibility of the parent or are they born 'that way'? Does society shape the individual or are we unable to help ourselves due to innate sinful characters? Can humans be like or even be God and in taking on His attributes and creative powers, have good outcomes? Is Victor Frankenstein purely an irresponsible parent or something more? Does ugliness without mean ugliness within? How should we respond to those who don't resemble us? What is consciousness and living - when does life become 'life'? Who has the right to take life or give it away? What happens when the Created turn scientists themselves and start to create and experiment? Can science and God co-exist?
Something of the class struggle is lost in this production as the sleeping nursemaid is no longer falsely accused of the boy's murder by incriminating evidence placed by the Creature, instead the boy's body appears on a Phantom of the Opera -style lake! But, dramatic effect, and the class element certainly appears when Victor's Judge father appears to rescue his son from a medical experiment gone horribly wrong in a Scottish croft, complete with the apparently corpse of a freshly murdered girl.
I was struck most of all by how fantastic the child actors are in this, given all that they have to go through. Also the introduction of the Creature to society through a clanking, steaming Industrial Revolution on wheels, a steam train and more! Plus Scottish crofters straight out of Hannay's 39 Steps, or even worse Hamish and Dougal.. you'll have had your tea.....
Like Frankenstein, catch the Creature while you can... He and his alter ego are only around for a few days....
The Jonny Lee Miller version is much more emotional, in terms of Creature and creator. Jonny Lee Miller brings a lot of humanity to the Creature in his poetry quoting and in having a voice from the beginning, as he is 'birthed', tumbling out from his creator's egg. Benedict Cumberbatch's scientist is not so much cold as self-centred, and perhaps afraid of women, and of love. Jonny Lee Miller is a much more conniving Creature as he deceives and lies to Elizabeth who has promised to be his friend and advocate - the slow uncomfortable build in this scene is terrifying; in the Creature's promises not to hurt and what he has learnt from humans about being human - evil, harm and revenge. The sympathy for Elizabeth is even more in this version as they start off having a kind and friendly chat which moves to hurt and harm.
Compared with Benedict Cumberbatch, Jonny Lee Miller's Creature seeks to engage with people. Benedict Cumberbatch's Creature is much more a thing of shadows and watchful. It's intriguing to watch both and see the emotional and dramatic shifts. Somehow, Jonny Lee Miller gives us more sympathy in his emotional betrayal of an abandoned 'child', although he is appalling in his enjoyment of cruelly taunting of his scientist pursuer. A hint of Jekyll and Hyde at the end...Who is the more human?
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