Saturday, February 26, 2011

Get thee to the UK: Frankenstein: Unbound!

If there's one theatrical performance I wish I could see right now, it's London's National Theatre production of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, directed by none other than Danny Boyle (fresh off of 127 Hours).
Frankenstein is poised to be this year's live performance sensation. Starring Jonny Lee Miller -- Boyle's own Trainspotting and so terrific last year on Dexter as a maniacal motivational speaker -- and Jeremy Cumberbatch -- The Beeb's stupendously reinvented Sherlock Holmes.
One of the things that makes this production such a captivating concept is that the roles are alternately played by both actors who take turns playing Victor Frankenstein and The Creature. A dynamic that's likely to make audiences feel that they haven't seen this Frankenstein unless they've seen it twice.
The play begins with a show-stopping birth scene, as a bloodied, naked Creature pushes through a membrane, embodying the state that all lives face as they emerge unprepared into the strangeness of our world, capturing the terror and awe of being born, staged like a surreal ballet. A sulfurous locomotive even takes the stage at one point, as Boyle offers up Shelley's 19th Century, an era of industrialization where man's aspiration to become God steams ahead of the moral compass necessary to control his creations.
Frankenstein marks a return to live theatre for Danny Boyle, who directed at the Royal Court Theatre before beginning his amazing filmmaking career. Exploring themes of innocence, parental and scientific responsibility and the nature of good and evil, Boyle and playwright Nick Dear have taken Mary Shelley's 1818 classic and rebirthed it as a timely and suspenseful Gothic tale, seemingly more relevant than ever.

Here's hoping these performances are captured permanently for audiences beyond the U.K. to enjoy. It just sounds astonishing!

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