It's Alive, Sort Of

Apart from my recent fascination with Heroes, I've never been the biggest sci-fi fan, so I truly dreaded reading Frankenstein when I was in graduate school. Dutifully, I bought a copy of Mary Shelley's classic piece of gothic horror, expecting reams of unadulterated green monsters and high-flying melodrama. Instead, I was truly riveted by her lovely writing, her incredible imagination, and the harrowing plot. Frankenstein blurs the line between humans and monsters, and it was a fascinating tool for class discussion and considering the dangers of contemporary scientific research. Cloning, anyone?

I approached the new Off-Broadway musical Frankenstein with hope, since its creators have repeatedly said that they aimed to bring the focus back to the story itself. So I couldn't have been more disappointed when I was greeted by lightning flashes, strobe lights, vapid characters, and a throroughly chilly, and rather brainless, staging of this classic novel.

Show Business Weekly Review: Frankenstein

As any theater person will tell you, Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein promises to be the theatrical event of the season, and so Frankenstein certainly has moxie to go head-to-head with its fellow monster. But if this is supposed to the more "serious" Frankenstein, we're in trouble, because director Bill Fennelly's staging draws involuntary laughter when it tries to take itself seriously (the many cheesy lines and semi-rhyming lyrics don't help much). To me, the first half of the show could have been an anthropological study representing the worst of what producers think that audiences want from theater right now: gratuitous spectacle, over-processed pop music, a bare-chested man, and a lightning-quickness that panders to the short attention spans of veteran TV watchers.

As the doctor's love interest, the extraordinary Christiane Noll brought heart and intelligence to the story, but she also brought an unfortunate reminder of the mega musical Jekyll & Hyde, in which she played a similar supporting role. (Full disclosure: J&H is a guily pleasure of mine, but not one that I want to see replicated and brought back from the dead ad infinitum). Frankenstein clearly wants to seduce those "Jekkies" (the rabid fans who saw the show tens and hundreds of times), and it just might succeed. I wanted to like Frankenstein, but I'm afraid that this monster of a musical might just find its audience--and lure producers away from more intelligent musicals and back into spawning more and more of the same old schlock. For once, can't we just let these decrepit shows rest in peace?