I, Frankenstein
- The Creature goes from “Monster” to “Hero”
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein
Nick Dear, Danny Boyle
Frankenstein
Kevin Grievaux, Stuart Beattie
I, Frankenstein
Boris Karloff, Robert de Niro, Christopher Lee, Aaron Eckhart, Johnny
Lee Miller, Benedict Cumberbatch. What have they all got in common? They have
all played Frankenstein’s monster, or the Creature, as he is now more commonly
called. Lee Miller and Cumberbatch even alternated roles, swapping roles
between the scientist Victor Frankenstein and the Creature he created every
other performance.
The director Danny Boyle explained the take: “Every other night they
reinhabit each other. They are mirrors of each other. And it’ll make the play
interesting for the actors to do --- they wont be able to settle and they’ll be
constantly sparring.“
At the time Boyle was preparing for the opening ceremony of the London
2012 Olympics and in fact he described Frankenstein as a “little
mini-sabbatical”, a welcome distraction from the Olympics job, which took two
full years of preparation.
Nick Dear was responsible for the adaptation in 2011. When one of the
drafts suggested opening the play from the Creature’s perspective, Danny Boyle
leapt at the opportunity. Because this opening suddenly gave the Creature his
voice back! One thing led to another and this prompted Boyle into switching the
lead roles around. Starting from the Creature’s point of view was the key to
unlocking the adaptation. Once you don’t start with Victor Frankenstein, you
need to balance the Creature with this obsession with his creator.
Boyles logical reasoning was: “So we rebalanced our approach by double
casting the actors”. Double casting also leaves no room for ego. Even though it
meant double the work load for the actors. One actor could start learning one
part . Only to find himself thrown by the other performer’s cues. Having both characters on the same page
is a distraction . But it is also appropriate. The two lead characters should
become the same in a way --- two strands of the same part. They are the creator
and son and the
obligation in that relationship is very close.
Mary Shelley’s original text was written in 1816, during a period when
she had two poets in her life: her husband Percy Byshe Shelley and Lord Byron.
Cumberbatch’s approach to Frankenstein was that “She sees Byron
as the noble savage in the Creature, whereas she sees Shelley as this obsessive
social misfit. So her novel makes sense of the psychodrama she found herself in”.
It is also possible that she just tried to scare everyone’s pants off.
When it comes to horror lore Shelley’s Frankenstein and Polidoris Vampire
and were born during the same night, when the Shelleys and their friends
told each other ghost stories, a popular
way to pass the time, not only in Charles Dickens Victorian novels. However, a little celebrity gossip
has never hurt the marketing of a good story. It becomes the story of the
story. And Byron is also said to have inspired the vampire stories, even the
tormented Edward in Twilight today is known as a “byronic hero” vampire.
But Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has gone from horror classic to
something else. Nick Dear and Danny Boyle wanted to bypass the story’s horror
film connections, from days when the Monster was marketed together with the
Vampire and the Mummy and other horror classics, and instead concentrate on the
ideas explored in Shelley’s original novel, which was in its day extremely
futuristic in its vision. Mary Shelley is looking forward to the technical
revolution --- 200 years from when she wrote it our technology is such that we
are achieving now what she had nightmares about.
Back to the night of the horror stories. Now-a-days vampires, werewolves
and even zombies have been cast as the heroes, not the monsters, of today’s bestselling novels and blockbusters.
Frankenstein’s monster, or The Creature, has also achieved hero status.
In the graphic novel I , Frankenstein by Kevin Grievaux the Creature, is the
saviour of the human world. The Creature is first called Adam, but after
accepting his past he starts calling himself Frankenstein, after his father,
his creator. So the two strands finally become one, after 200 years.
Adam Frankenstein has the role of all Hollywood blockbusters: looking
good, while getting the girl and saving the world, all in one fair swoop. Aaron
Eckhart was chosen for the role of Frankenstein when Walt Disney Studios
transmediated the graphic novel for the silver screen.
In the future our world, the human world, is protected by gargoyles, but
threatened by demons and both sides want, nay both sides need,
Frankenstein in order to win. The gargoles want the human world to remain, the
demons want to take over completely. This is rather like Cassandra Clares The
Mortal Instruments with marked weapons to kill demons, with gargoyles
instead of shadow hunters living in
desolate churches. The humans no longer believe in the church, they no longer
believe in science, they no longer believe in the future. But the gargoyles
still believe the humans are worth protecting, rescuing saving … And
Frankenstein, as immortal and indestructible as any old vampire, join their
ranks to protect humankind. The journey from monster to hero is thus completed
for the creature, who now proudly calls himself Frankenstein, after his human
father. For no man is an island - and no monster is without a family.
