The Theatre Times: A futuristic freezing laboratory where naked human avatars hang for research purposes. Doctor Frankenstein has occupied the laboratory and taken the patients hostage. Has he found a likely place to piece a creature together? Two centuries after Mary Shelley wrote the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his nameless creature, the Schauspielhaus Zürich commemorate the novel with a stage adaptation of Frankenstein written by science fiction author Dietmar Dath. The compelling images by the director, Stefan Pucher is of ominous and spectral poetry.
3 comments:
The original Frankenstein story, I agree that while having been written with many horror tropes, does resemble more science fiction stories. When I think of the story I immediately think of a dark castle with the doctor and the monster lurking inside, which then cuts to a mob - and lots of fire. For this adaptation we lose that sort of classic aesthetic, but none of the story and ulterior meanings. The perspective has been adjusted to make a statement about modernity and artificial intelligence, and whole the whole environment mimics that. If you watch the video, it's clear that it resembles a more futuristic lab space, a very sterile environment which gives a lot of opportunity for the media designers to play around with imagery - from what looks like very green balls of scienc-y things to strange clips of women. In this context it is much clearer to the audience that it is a tale out of science fiction, and more of a story about the struggles of scientific progress. The overall aesthetic for the show is, while simply, very edgy and it would be interesting to see how audiences, and perhaps fans of the original tale react to this version.
I think this production is a great choice right now! We are on the verge of making clones, designer babies, organ donor farms, etc... It is important for us to fully explore and understand our stance as the human race on creating artificial intelligence. We need to understand that our relationship with technology can not always be one of domination over nature. At some point we will hit a wall and possibly create something dangerous if we refuse to back down from nature. I believe there are some things we cannot control and should not attempt to. Stripping away the environment that people immediately associate with the tale of Frankenstien will allow for this theme to fully permeate the production. While Frankenstien has always been firmly within science fiction, I think some of the aesthetics of early productions of it place it more in the realm of horror which would not work as well for this production.
I love the idea of Frankenstein, just as I very much love the idea of this production. As the world has never had a decent adaptation of the original source for film, the closest being the Kenneth Branagh one which was decent but horribly over acted to opera level of melodrama. If I really want 19th century horror I’ll stick with Dracula which is far more interesting to me. Frankenstein becomes too sad in my opinion, and if it is fantasy of the science fiction type even worse because I quite dislike any science fiction, especially of the dystopian flavor. So the more the story is updated to modern technology the less I am interested in it because I am really interested in the relationship between creature and creator, and the dangers we take on when we attempt to play God. This production looks cool at least and the actors seem wonderfully adept to the material.
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