It’s amazing how a simple rope can
connect an audience with a stage. The Olivier Theatre can be an
alienating space for viewers, so Danny Boyle on his return to theatre
direction had the masterly idea of simply hanging a bell-rope down into
the central aisle. Every so often as we enter, an actor tolls it, but
the rest of the time we are perfectly at liberty to give it a ding
ourselves.
Space, scale and
connection inform Boyle’s approach to the classic tale throughout. The
performance proper (two hours without interval) begins with a blinding
flash of light from an enormous array of light blubs covering about
half of the ceiling; this, and its repetitions, are the electric
charges that jolt the Creature into life as it falls out of a huge
membranous pouch. The next five or six minutes consist of its trying to
stand; briefly, Victor Frankenstein enters, is shocked to see the
Creature and flees; then suddenly a great steampunk engine enters on
rails, and all is noise and smoke.
It
seems as if we are to be treated to an impressionistic montage version
of the story, but matters gradually assume greater narrative coherence
as the Creature’s own powers of apprehension develop. For Nick Dear’s
adaptation is very much the Creature’s story. Victor’s life and the
background to its creation are excised, referred to only fleetingly
much later; so, too, we see at some length the Creature’s friendship
with and education by the blind old man De Lacey, normally compacted to
a single scene in screen adaptations. Here, however, this process is
the grounding of the Creature’s awareness of himself, his thoughts and
feelings, his place in the world or lack of it.
Apart
from Boyle’s return to stage work, the major selling point of this
production is the central casting, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny
Lee Miller alternating in the two main roles; the National Theatre
therefore held two successive press nights. Miller finds a remarkable
physical language for the Creature: not Karloff-lumbering, but at once
graceful and unnatural, as if no movement comes to him by instinct.
Cumberbatch’s Victor has the same dissociated obsessiveness as his
recent TV Sherlock Holmes; it is little surprise that his bride
Elizabeth (Naomie Harris) bonds more in a few minutes with the Creature
than Victor has in years of engagement to her. And in one illuminating
moment, when Victor affects to test the Creature’s human capacities by
asking it what love is before he agrees to build a mate for it, it is
clear that Cumberbatch’s Victor is listening to a description that he
has never himself had the understanding to form.
When
they swap roles, the nature of each actor leads to a slight diminution
of power: Miller’s fieriness and physicality render Victor less
fascinatingly detached, whereas Cumberbatch’s more cerebral approach
attenuates the alienness of the Creature’s movements and allows him to
grasp matters of abstract reasoning a little too readily. But what
Boyle has done with visual flair and conceptual bravado is to create a
compelling account of two men and the bond between them, or one man and
one shell, and not necessarily the way round that one would assume.
Dear’s
adaptation cleaves more closely to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel than any
familiar film version, although it also excises a number of major
characters and plot strands entirely. And film designer Mark
Tildesley’s revolve-centred set would fill any West End venue if,
say,
War Horse were to be put out to pasture any time soon.
Written for the Financial
Times.