...and Another Frankenstein

"...and Another Frankenstein" is...yes, another!...representing of that great, Romantic era, Gothic melodrama that has held spellbound both playwrights and audiences since its earliest stage version five years after the publication of the novel's first edition.  Indeed, there're dozens of re-make versions out there -- and you can be sure there'll be more.  Why?  What is it about this novel's four intertwined -- highly melodramatic -- stories that so popularly and persistently fascinates audiences?  Well, from a theater-maker's point of view...it's the melodrama: of the Demon's desperate desire for love and his/her rage at its denial, of Victor's crippling remorse for having created such a solitarily monstrous creature, of Justine's calvary wrongly convicted of William's murder, and of (the frame story) Walton's ill-fated quest for fame as an explorer.  In this re-enacting, these four plot streams concurrently play out, thanks to the devices of a play-within-the-play and that of making the Demon a scenographic effect and vocal presence rather than a personage enacted onstage the more usual way.  In this play then, there is no pale green, most often male, and often cartoonly hideous, horror genre figure; even so, the character of the Demon -- his/her voice intact and beautiful -- is very present throughout the play, as his/her story is being enacted in the play-within-the-play.  Also, this play represents this globally well-known story in a theater-poetry made of standard, global English -- to make for compelling, and popular, contemporary theater accessible to a wide range of today's daily users of today's global language.

Cast: 
3 F; 4 M
Authors: 
Will Owen