Frankenstein

Stephen and I had a lot of fun last weekend. We spent a lot of time watching movies, good and bad, and good-bad.

Frankenstein was a lot of fun. It was a musical to my surprise, but it also kept up a poetic cadence even when not singing. The play is helped along by a chorus/narrators who talk to the audience. So it's not trying to suspend disbelief so much as it is telling us the story that we're familiar with.

It's emotional and funny, and it doesn't seem to deviate much from the original story in content. Display is a different matter though. One of Frankenstein's friends gets a song about him despite not having a line in the play or doing more than the amusing housekeeper for his lab/apartment. That seemed a little strange.

The costumes and sets are all exaggerated paper constructs, making it look kind of dream-like and Seuss-like. Lights are projected on the white sets and costumes, and sometimes this is dramatically significant.

The acting and singing was all quite good, and the players seem to be doing double duty on stage as part of the chorus and the characters. The actors and chorus all seem to have a satircial exaggerated bent to them. When taking the content and acting together, it's clear that this is some kind of post-modern reimagining. For whatever that matters.

Stephen drew my attention to the way Frankenstein still doesn't seem to quite get where he went wrong in the end. His ignorance, when taken in conjunction with the introductory and closing numbers where, "we close our eyes and cover our ears..." may suggest there was a small message in this story too about ignorance. The implications of scientific discovery? Consequences to our actions? (Example: The Hip Hop Kids frontin' on a bear)