What I liked
The stage pictures Jola Cora and Isabel Powell create under the dynamic lighting of the striking McCadden Theater are as evocative as they are eerie, recalling classic paintings and film stills in stunning detail while crafting a few new ones along the way. Tying together threads between the historical exploitation of the Industrial Revolution and the attempted exploitation of the modern AI invasion, Cora asks big questions and finds partial answers in the pages of an ever-more-timely book celebrating its 210th birthday. The ultimate answers are left up to us, but it’s clear: much as Victor couldn’t defeat death in the 19th century, we cannot engineer our own salvation in the 21st. That has to come from us.
The gorgeous costumes will delight fans of Guillermo del Toro’s work (not just Frankenstein, but Crimson Peak as well) and those engaged in art history, film history, and literature will find a lot to dig into here—-way more than I was expecting given the show’s quick runtime. Cora certainly knows how to pack a large intellectual punch into a short amount of time, and I wish I could see the show a few more times to fully delve into the work’s details and intricacies.
What I didn't like
Perhaps because I’m familiar with the 1816 story, I would have preferred to see more time and development put into the 2036 story. I’m not sure I needed all of the 1816 interlude, and occasionally had a little trouble following the text.
My overall impression
A hauntingly beautiful pastiche hearkening back to the writing of Frankenstein, and the horror of the tale’s relevance today…
