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May. 1st, 2020 01:17 amSo, within all this Covid era business, I finally get a chance to settle down engage in some free streamed Culture (there are times I think I could use a bit of that boredom everyone else seems to be complaining about. But I've learned the hard way to be careful what I wish for).
The National Theatre's Frankenstein was both more and less than I'd hoped for: more, because Cumberbach's performance as the creature was indeed stunning, both physically and mentally. He must have studied infants to really understand how new people struggle for existence in the early stages. Thrilling to watch. Less, because the makers really dumbed down the moral struggles that made the novel so powerful.
Mary Shelly made the Creature sympathetic, but never allowed us to forget that it is also evil; it commits atrocities. Victor comes across as highly irresponsible, but not necessarily immoral. We spend time in each of their heads, we go through both of their struggles, we live through each of them and we empathize with each whether we like it or not. It is possibly the most profoundly balanced book every written.
Not so in the stage-play. Our sympathies are with the monster, and that's that. Victor is rather narcissistic and megalomaniacal. A Hollywood mad-scientist "meddling with the natural order" (yes, that is a line from the play) We don't even meet him 'till half way through.
Take the matter of the aborted female. In the novel, we feel Victor's impossible situation. On the one hand, he has his duty to his own creation, his word, his honour, his compassion towards a living being whose suffering only he can alleviate. On the other, his wider responsibility to humanity in general - what right has he to unleash a potentially greater evil upon it? He is deeply torn, as are we.
(Side note: for all its trappings of proto-science fiction, the book still betrays elements of mysticism here: does the world's greatest biologist really have no way of predicting the Creature's nature, or longevity, or whether the two could reproduce? Surely making her sterile would be the least of his challenges).
There are hints of that here - bringing in William's ghost was clever. But even so, the Monster's child-like innocence and Victor's rather callous change of mind don't really capture the conflict. I suppose some of it stems from a natural sympathy for the deformed underdog, which is not a bad sympathy for a culture to develop, but it does simplify, almost infantalize the story.
If "the child is the father of the man", the Creature shapes Victor at least as much as the other way around. Creator and created, linked body and soul, inextricably forever. There's a heavy religious element here, and arguably the monotheistic religions are metaphors for Fatherhood anyway. This comes across. But other themes: to what extent is the creator responsibly to the created? To what extent are we responsible for our actions? How far can we blame nurture for our natures? What are the inherent rights (and responsibilities) of sentient beings? The book captures these like few other books do. The stageplay boils it down to "don't mess with nature" and "create life the old-fashioned way". It's not as satisfying.
The National Theatre's Frankenstein was both more and less than I'd hoped for: more, because Cumberbach's performance as the creature was indeed stunning, both physically and mentally. He must have studied infants to really understand how new people struggle for existence in the early stages. Thrilling to watch. Less, because the makers really dumbed down the moral struggles that made the novel so powerful.
Mary Shelly made the Creature sympathetic, but never allowed us to forget that it is also evil; it commits atrocities. Victor comes across as highly irresponsible, but not necessarily immoral. We spend time in each of their heads, we go through both of their struggles, we live through each of them and we empathize with each whether we like it or not. It is possibly the most profoundly balanced book every written.
Not so in the stage-play. Our sympathies are with the monster, and that's that. Victor is rather narcissistic and megalomaniacal. A Hollywood mad-scientist "meddling with the natural order" (yes, that is a line from the play) We don't even meet him 'till half way through.
Take the matter of the aborted female. In the novel, we feel Victor's impossible situation. On the one hand, he has his duty to his own creation, his word, his honour, his compassion towards a living being whose suffering only he can alleviate. On the other, his wider responsibility to humanity in general - what right has he to unleash a potentially greater evil upon it? He is deeply torn, as are we.
(Side note: for all its trappings of proto-science fiction, the book still betrays elements of mysticism here: does the world's greatest biologist really have no way of predicting the Creature's nature, or longevity, or whether the two could reproduce? Surely making her sterile would be the least of his challenges).
There are hints of that here - bringing in William's ghost was clever. But even so, the Monster's child-like innocence and Victor's rather callous change of mind don't really capture the conflict. I suppose some of it stems from a natural sympathy for the deformed underdog, which is not a bad sympathy for a culture to develop, but it does simplify, almost infantalize the story.
If "the child is the father of the man", the Creature shapes Victor at least as much as the other way around. Creator and created, linked body and soul, inextricably forever. There's a heavy religious element here, and arguably the monotheistic religions are metaphors for Fatherhood anyway. This comes across. But other themes: to what extent is the creator responsibly to the created? To what extent are we responsible for our actions? How far can we blame nurture for our natures? What are the inherent rights (and responsibilities) of sentient beings? The book captures these like few other books do. The stageplay boils it down to "don't mess with nature" and "create life the old-fashioned way". It's not as satisfying.
