![]() Henry is fascinated with the heroes of Roncesvalles, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and the knights of the Crusades. Henry is a writer and poet, a more creative person than the scientifically minded Victor. He befriends Henry Clerval, a Romantic character, who becomes his life-long pal. ![]() When Victor's parents return to Geneva to settle down, Victor is more solitary, doesn't like crowds, and finds himself alone at school. Victor is the seeker of knowledge, "delighting in investigating their causes." He seeks answers to what occurs in nature and the physical world. It is not unlike Mary Shelley's own lust for learning as a child and as the wife of Percy Shelley. The reader now sees a small glimpse of Victor's obsession with knowledge and learning. Victor tells how he and Elizabeth are brought up together as "there was not quite a year difference in our ages." He is serious and loud as a child, while Elizabeth has a more calm and subdued personality. At age 15, Victor witnesses an electrical storm that peaks his interest in electricity and possible applications for its use. His voracious appetite for knowledge thus begins, and eventually leads him to study science and alchemy. Victor introduces his life-long friend Henry Clerval, a creative child who studies literature and folklore.Īt the age of 13, Victor discovers the works of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus, all alchemists from an earlier age. Their parents decide to settle down in Geneva to concentrate on raising their family. Up to this point, he and Elizabeth have been the primary receivers of their parents' love. Overall, an ambitious and successful realisation of an excellent adaptation, lifted to another level by a superb performance from Nuttall as The Creature.Around the age of seven, Victor's younger brother is born. ![]() Victor Frankenstein’s story is a sorry tale of how single-minded passion can fatally cloud judgment and the play asks us whether a person is innately good or evil, or is it society which dictates our character and actions. In the same way Cumberbatch/Miller found in the original NT production, doing this allows the relationship with his fiancé Elizabeth (Amy Lou Harris) to take a more prominent part in the latter story and provide some balance. ![]() The scenes with De Lacey (Hugh Everett), a blind peasant who teaches The Creature to read and showing him the only warmth he encounters, are delicate and tender and his development towards humanity serves to make later scenes involving both murder and rape all the more compelling.Īn issue with such a strong central performance was that the parallel story of Victor Frankenstein was somewhat overshadowed in the narrative, with Cunningham needing more obsessional madness in his performance to match the physicality and dominance of Nuttall. The Creature encounters both hostility and kindness wandering through the world, searching first for the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’, morphing into his quest to find his creator and create a companion in his loneliness. By using Nick Dear’s 2011 National Theatre adaptation of the Shelley novel, placing The Creature (Rhys Nuttall) at the centre of the story gave both pace and arc to the two-hour production, dispensing with the unnecessary backstory of the creator.Īs the story progresses, we observe the best and worst of mankind. With Direction and Set Design in the capable hands of Barry J C Purves, this was always going to be a more delicate study on the nature of humanity. Those patrons expecting a hoary old ‘Boris Karloff with a bolt through the neck’ rendition, would have been disappointed. So, we find 2022 kicking off with an absolutely cracking adaptation of the Mary Shelley gothic masterpiece, both chilling and thought provoking and with a simply stunning central performance. Under the aegis of Artistic Director Joseph Meighan, their programming is broadening its appeal beyond the traditional light comedy and murder mystery, into edgier and darker territory. These are interesting times at the Garrick Playhouse in the leafy south Manchester suburb of Altrincham.
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