Theatre: NYT’s Frankenstein
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
Across the dimmed lights of the theatre row upon row of the audience faced us like a regiment of Star Wars Stormtroopers. Menacing. Immobile. Staring.
Unblinking, we stared back above a strip of stage for a modern re-working of Frankenstein, the Gothic thriller that has chilled generations since Mary Shelley penned her story in 1818.
The National Youth Theatre REP company are now presenting the classic with a very modern twist.
In what’s claimed to be the largest use of virtual reality headsets in a theatre setting 250 of us morphed from Southwark Playhouse theatre-goers to Darth Vader’s Galactic Empire ground force.
Mary Shelley was only 19 when she imagined how maverick scientist Victor Frankenstein created a monster in human form, huge and hideously ugly, but sensitive and who, when shunned by society, turns on his creator.
The company’s talented actors are scarcely older than Shelley when she created her story. Now, adapted by writer Carl Miller and directed by Emily Gray, they present a riveting version for the technological age.
The play begins as a documentary account of a polar expedition when the driven, friendless explorer meets a mysterious stranger on the ice who tells of a human created by artificial intelligence.
Hence our virtual reality headsets, donned after the interval and showing us scenes of melting polar ice _ terrifyingly relevant in our climate crisis _ and of shifting psychedelic patterns as seen from the monster’s point of view.
The production poses the big questions: can humans live in harmony with the technology they have created? Will we destroy the planet and ourselves in the pursuit of ‘progress’?
It’s a lively, fast-paced, emotional roller-coaster – a thrilling thriller.
- National Youth Theatre presents Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley in new version by Carl Miller, directed by Emily Gray, Southwark Playhouse until November 30. See nyt.org.uk.
