Saturday, February 19, 2011
Frankenstein on stage: a case of double vision?
guardian.co.uk: "Danny Boyle's hotly anticipated production of Frankenstein, in a new version by Nick Dear, opens next week at the National theatre. The show's two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, will be alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, so, unless they can afford to go twice, audience members are going to have to choose which way round they want to see the casting. But is this doubling up just an astute marketing ploy? Or is it, perhaps, a broader commentary? Can the relationship of Frankenstein and the Creature tell us anything about the symbiotic relationship of stage and audience? Even about the theatre itself?
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I don't think double casting is a Frankenstein's monster allegory. If reading the article correctly what excites audiences (based on celebrated productions that worked well) about double casting is it's close connection to superstition. (Mirror, ghosts, doppelgangers, etc.) While Frankenstein's monster certainly was built from pieces and memories of others I don't think you can the same for the theater. Theater is not a patch-work creation is a very solid form. What excites audiences is not the that theater is a test-tube laboratory of themes and emotions but a conductor of energy. Nor is theater a mirror to reality as many people say. A reflector perhaps in the fact that playwrights write what they know and see but theater creates electricity. Spectator performing for audience, audience returning their energy with empathy; it is an alternating current circulating between two (at least) human beings. The reason why double casting works so well is that the performer conductor can be exchanged for another and the energy created is new, different and can be equally as exciting.
I suspect what is really happening here is that Frankenstein on stage, has never worked. Seems every 10 years someone is adapting it to the stage. And there's a reason why those adaptations have been forgotten. By using a popular casting convention (one that has sold tickets) maybe this production of Frankenstein won't be so easily forgotten. How well this will work depends on how much you think the original story is indeed a doppelganger story. (Which I do not.)
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