THEATRE REVIEW: FRANKENSTEIN
12 May'10

‘Frankenstein’ dead in first act

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 3 out of 5

Like a child parading in adult shoes, Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre just can’t seem to find a venue here that fits its product.

To refresh your memory: Catalyst’s production of NEVERMORE: THE IMAGINARY LIFE AND MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF EDGAR ALLEN POE made its Toronto premiere during last year’s Luminato Festival and, for all its considerable charm, was all but eaten up by the expanse of the Winter Garden Theatre.

Now, Catalyst has made its way to Toronto again, this time trailing their made-in-Edmonton production of FRANKENSTEIN — an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus — conceived by writer/director/composer Jonathan Christenson and designer Bretta Gerecke. And this time out, they’ve bypassed the theatrical complex on Yonge Street and pitched their tent on the stage of the Bluma Appel Theatre in a presentation by Canadian Stage.

The Bluma is a lovely theatre (OK, so maybe the seat rows are a tad close together for anyone with more than about a 25-inch leg), but once again, it’s just too large a space for the elaborately over-embroidered, bordering-on-precious style of theatre Catalyst favours. Rather than cocoon the story and its delicate beauty, this space serves only to keep its audience at such a remove that one simply can’t get by the artifice to fully appreciate the art for far too much of the show.

Written largely in rhyming couplets, FRANKENSTEIN, under Christenson’s direction, is performed in an archly melodramatic style that puts one in mind of shows like THE VILE GOVERNESS and THE GLITTERING HEART which Stewart Lemoine and his Teatro La Quindicina used to bring from Edmonton to inflict on unsuspecting Toronto audiences from the Factory stage years ago.

There are also plenty of songs — a wide variety of them, none of which seem destined to threaten Sondheim’s supremacy on the musical stage, nor Webber’s for that matter. And finally there’s Gerecke’s celebrated explosion-in-a-paper-mill design that sees everything from props to costumes to sets made out of paper, with a good measure of plastic thrown in places where paper simply won’t do, of course.

As for the story, fans of Shelley’s tale will recognize large chunks of it, albeit in a form necessarily simplified to reflect the affected naivete in Christenson’s rhyming patterns.

Andrew Kushnir is cast as the precocious young Victor Frankenstein of title, a mad scientist in training, while George Szilagyi essays the creature he creates and then abandons. Nick Green, Tim Machin, Sarah Machin Gale, Nancy McAlear and Tracy Penner round out the cast, tackling various roles and acting throughout as the narrating chorus that keeps things moving forward.

And frankly, particularly in an overlong first act, they don’t do much of a job of it, the action dragging along at such a pace that you’re certain to have time to appreciate the genius of Gerecke’s designs, and the effectiveness of Laura Krewski’s choreography, Wade Staples’ sound design and perhaps even the new paint job in the theatre. Let’s just say that no one, save Frankenstein himself, is likely to shout: “It’s alive!” in this theatre.

Things do pick up in the second act as the story moves from exposition to character work and the playwright abandons rhymes for reason, allowing the actors to move the story forward on the basis of their acting skills. But frankly, it is not enough to overcome the ennui of that first act — or to get those who did an intermission flit back into the theatre.
In the final analysis, FRANKENSTEIN may have a lot of charm, but not nearly enough by half to fill a theatre of this size.