Ken Schwartz and Allen Cole’s musical Frankenstein By Fire, adapted from the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley is wonderfully evocative, vividly punctuated by the use of percussive plastic tubes, which the cast hit against the floor and their bodies to create the story’s urgent musical heartbeat.
The story begins with Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Devin MacKinnon) being rescued by Captain Walton (Ryan Rogerson) in the isolated Arctic Ocean. When asked what has brought him to so remote a location, and without adequate provisions, Frankenstein begins to tell the Captain his extraordinary tale. Out of his earliest (and happiest) memories appear his family, his dear parents, Alphonse and Caroline (Jim Fowler and Chris O’Neill), his adopted “sister” Elizabeth (Mary Fay Coady), his little brothers Ernest and William (Burgandy Code and Geneviève Steele), Justine (Hilary Adams) and his best friend Henry (Jeff Schwager), and he paints a happy life filled with dramatic play acting and a lot of love. He is devastated when his mother dies, and he goes away to school in Germany to study medicine, but becomes more enchanted with macabre experiments, attempting to become a master of death and to learn how to build new life from dead corpses. When his experiment succeeds, he is immediately caught off guard, fills with regret for what he has done, and banishes his creature (Matthew Lumley) to the streets. The creature turns on him to devastating effect for the Frankenstein family, but when the creature confronts Frankenstein to admit the carnage he has wrought upon him he has his own sad story to tell.
Steele and Code are full of boisterous innocence as the youngest of the Frankensteins, while Fowler is a pillar of strength and gentleness as the family’s patriarch. O’Neill portrays Caroline as a woman whose lap is big enough for everyone. Schwager’s sweet Henry is the very antithesis of Toxic Masculinity, loving his friend generously and with a beautifully earnest heart. The fact that Victor has been raised and rooted in such kindness, love, and support makes his inability to have empathy for his creature all the more frustrating. Grief, it seems, is the real monster in this story.
Devin MacKinnon plays Victor from the beginning as the most reserved member of the family. He isn’t able to express his true feelings toward Elizabeth, and Mary Fay Coady does a beautiful job of creating an Elizabeth who is trying to be as open and loving as possible, but who is unsure whether she should be treating Victor like an older brother or a potential lover- a very awkward and confusing scenario for her to be in. MacKinnon’s Victor retreats further into himself after the death of Caroline, but even though he hears his creature speak of his own heartbreak in being constantly rejected because of his terrifying outward appearance and his overwhelming loneliness, Victor still prefers to see him as a monster than as a man, and is adamant to cast him as the villain in his story. Matthew Lumley plays the creature with great pathos and gentleness; it’s easy to understand his sadness and his rage. Ryan Rogerson is fantastic, as well, as the weather-worn and astonished Captain. Hilary Adams is heartbreaking when Justine is betrayed by the courts, and assumes she has also been abandoned by her family.
It rained the evening that I saw this show, so the play was performed in the Studio Theatre, but it’s been staged by Schwartz to be performed outside around a fire. I can imagine the spookiness of the show would really be enhanced outside at night, and the obvious fire imagery in this story makes it an especially apt fireside tale. Cole’s music really fits into the world of the show, it doesn’t feel like Frankenstein: The Musical!, instead the music stems initially from a home where lullabies are sung, and then the songs are used as part of Victor’s memories to shade both the happy and the tragic elements of the story. The songs are woven in beautifully with the percussion, which you can feel resounding in your bones.
I love Two Planks’ theatre around the fire, and with the addition of Allen Cole’s music, Frankenstein is one of my favourites so far.
Two Planks and a Passion‘s Frankenstein By Fire plays Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 9:00pm through August 17, 2019 at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts (555 Ross Creek Road, Canning, Nova Scotia). For tickets please visit this website or call 902.582.3073.
You can find Two Planks and a Passion/ Ross Creek Centre for the Arts on Social Media: Facebook. Twitter. Instagram (@rosscreek).
