Wednesday! I saw Danny Boyle's version of Frankenstein with the original casting (Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature, Johnny Lee Miller as Victor). ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
everysecondtuesday was awesome enough to accompany me and suffer through this experience, which was broadcast in select theaters over two nights (first night with the original cast, second with the reverse cast). I'm still cobbling together my thoughts in a coherent review; this post is just a couple thoughts that I'm throwing out there for the sake of giving my overall impression.
- The set design was sparse, but they did a LOT with it. Same with the lighting.
- Opening scene: The Creature (Benedict Cumberbatch) writhing on the ground as he masters his limbs and learns to walk. For over five minutes, the man is acting against his muscles. In a short feature before the performance, he and Johnny Lee Miller explained their different approaches to the Creature. BC took his inspiration from physical therapy patients, JLM from his two year old son. Watching BC move as the Creature in this first scene, though, it felt as though the Creature was more like a child learning to walk (accented by the noises he made). Later in the play, there's still an infantile sense to his Creature's movements, but the character has more control over his muscles; his gestures are still exaggerated yet simple, which is where the physical therapy inspiration comes in. Largely, I interpreted his Creature's movement as an imperfect imitation of man's - which all he knows how to be.
- Similarly, I enjoyed BC's Creature's speech pattern. At his most eloquent, he still lacks elegance. The effect is interesting in conjunction with his grandiose parodistic movements: the Creature speaks his own words, voices his own thoughts, but they're imperfect. He says the words, yet they lack inflection, which makes him sound very much like a child even with the high level of discourse he uses to discuss love, mankind, the pain of rejection.
- Even with the simplicity of the Creature, he's still a more emotional character than Victor, who fails to understand the audacity of his arrogance, foolishly regards himself as superior to his creation, and fails to return any feelings of love for his fiancee (Elizabeth - whose actress was fantastic) until he childishly destroys the Creature's love out of fear - until it's too late, of course. Even then, Victor's "love" for Elizabeth is (to me) questionable, because he treats her less as a love interest and more as property, locking her up on their wedding night in fear that the Creature will kill her to take his revenge on Victor (which, hey, the Creature does).
- All of which segues into the interesting observation that Tuesday brought up of women in the play - while progressive in thought - as objects to own and be taken away. Unfortunately, "taken away" in this play means humiliation and death, with humiliation equating to rape. *facepalm*
I didn't like that "humiliation" meant rape (major trigger warning for anyone who gets a chance to see the play, btw), because the degradation of this rape implies that the woman's body belongs to the man and not herself, therefore rape is more a slight against the man's ownership than a crime and invasion of a woman's body. (If any of that makes sense)
Honestly, all of this could have been avoided if Victorhad a Sassy Gay Friend hadn't been a complete asshole.
- Anyhow.
- Of course, the play ends with Victor pursuing the Creature, because that's all he has left in his life. This next part is beautiful - wait for it: They walk off into the sunset/rise of the arctic wasteland together, the Creature supporting and leading Victor, who hobbles after having nearly died (but was brought back by the Creature's frantic realization that he needs Victor to chase him, because as the only one of his kind, he has nothing - or something like that). I enjoyed that the play ended here, because - with the back of the set opening up into LIGHT - it implies that the chase is eternal, that what they have (hate, this desperate need for one another because it validates their questionable life choices, etc) will be forever. You don't see Victor die, you don't see the monster wander into the lonely wastes; you see them journey into the unknown, which isn't ominous and doesn't end in inevitable death.
- So, yeah. That was Frankenstein.
- Amusing aside: there seemed to be a lot of Sherlock fen in the audience. Brilliant XD
They need to release this play (BOTH castings!) on DVD, like yesterday. I would watch the fuck out of this and the special features. They did it with David Tennant's performance of Hamlet and the awesome Soviet Russia-inspired version of Macbeth (with Patrick Stewart). Why not Frankenstein? They're sitting on a goldmine!!
everysecondtuesday was awesome enough to accompany me and suffer through this experience, which was broadcast in select theaters over two nights (first night with the original cast, second with the reverse cast). I'm still cobbling together my thoughts in a coherent review; this post is just a couple thoughts that I'm throwing out there for the sake of giving my overall impression.- The set design was sparse, but they did a LOT with it. Same with the lighting.
- Opening scene: The Creature (Benedict Cumberbatch) writhing on the ground as he masters his limbs and learns to walk. For over five minutes, the man is acting against his muscles. In a short feature before the performance, he and Johnny Lee Miller explained their different approaches to the Creature. BC took his inspiration from physical therapy patients, JLM from his two year old son. Watching BC move as the Creature in this first scene, though, it felt as though the Creature was more like a child learning to walk (accented by the noises he made). Later in the play, there's still an infantile sense to his Creature's movements, but the character has more control over his muscles; his gestures are still exaggerated yet simple, which is where the physical therapy inspiration comes in. Largely, I interpreted his Creature's movement as an imperfect imitation of man's - which all he knows how to be.
- Similarly, I enjoyed BC's Creature's speech pattern. At his most eloquent, he still lacks elegance. The effect is interesting in conjunction with his grandiose parodistic movements: the Creature speaks his own words, voices his own thoughts, but they're imperfect. He says the words, yet they lack inflection, which makes him sound very much like a child even with the high level of discourse he uses to discuss love, mankind, the pain of rejection.
- Even with the simplicity of the Creature, he's still a more emotional character than Victor, who fails to understand the audacity of his arrogance, foolishly regards himself as superior to his creation, and fails to return any feelings of love for his fiancee (Elizabeth - whose actress was fantastic) until he childishly destroys the Creature's love out of fear - until it's too late, of course. Even then, Victor's "love" for Elizabeth is (to me) questionable, because he treats her less as a love interest and more as property, locking her up on their wedding night in fear that the Creature will kill her to take his revenge on Victor (which, hey, the Creature does).
- All of which segues into the interesting observation that Tuesday brought up of women in the play - while progressive in thought - as objects to own and be taken away. Unfortunately, "taken away" in this play means humiliation and death, with humiliation equating to rape. *facepalm*
I didn't like that "humiliation" meant rape (major trigger warning for anyone who gets a chance to see the play, btw), because the degradation of this rape implies that the woman's body belongs to the man and not herself, therefore rape is more a slight against the man's ownership than a crime and invasion of a woman's body. (If any of that makes sense)
Honestly, all of this could have been avoided if Victor
- Anyhow.
- Of course, the play ends with Victor pursuing the Creature, because that's all he has left in his life. This next part is beautiful - wait for it: They walk off into the sunset/rise of the arctic wasteland together, the Creature supporting and leading Victor, who hobbles after having nearly died (but was brought back by the Creature's frantic realization that he needs Victor to chase him, because as the only one of his kind, he has nothing - or something like that). I enjoyed that the play ended here, because - with the back of the set opening up into LIGHT - it implies that the chase is eternal, that what they have (hate, this desperate need for one another because it validates their questionable life choices, etc) will be forever. You don't see Victor die, you don't see the monster wander into the lonely wastes; you see them journey into the unknown, which isn't ominous and doesn't end in inevitable death.
- So, yeah. That was Frankenstein.
- Amusing aside: there seemed to be a lot of Sherlock fen in the audience. Brilliant XD
They need to release this play (BOTH castings!) on DVD, like yesterday. I would watch the fuck out of this and the special features. They did it with David Tennant's performance of Hamlet and the awesome Soviet Russia-inspired version of Macbeth (with Patrick Stewart). Why not Frankenstein? They're sitting on a goldmine!!
