The more I think about Frankenstein the more it awes me. As I’ve said elsewhere in this issue, Mary Shelley’s 1818 epistolary novel addresses all kinds of modern anxieties. But that’s mostly because its themes have power without regard to time. The story of Victor Frankenstein’s all-too successful experiment in biochemistry speaks, tragically, to questions so big I feel awkward writing them down: What is life? What is death? What is the source of being? What is a soul? What is happiness? What do we owe our gods? What do they owe us? What does it mean to be human? To be divine? And what’s the difference between the two?
Sonneville’s dark gravitas is such that you can almost forget to wonder why Victoria finds the creature, her creature, so hideous—especially inasmuch as it takes the form of a rather elegant outsize puppet designed by Cynthia Von Orthal, and, in one of the production’s most successful gestures, operated by a cadre that starts with Victoria’s father (Chris Hainsworth) and grows to include all the creature’s victims. But the subject is there nonetheless. Shelley engages it, formidably, in the book; at Lifeline, Victoria’s revulsion comes across as more inchoate, more visceral. In fact, Kauzlaric and Holmquist frame many of her actions as extra-rational. Even magical. The scene where she animates the creature is less a scientific procedure, for instance, than an artful sort of spell casting. Which sets up some queasy implications in light of the Victor/Victoria gender change. Are we supposed to see the female Frankenstein as more intuitive than her male counterpart? More emotional? Witchier? Could she be suffering from what a physician of Shelley’s time might’ve diagnosed as hysteria?
Through 10/28: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, lifelinetheatre.com, $40, $30 seniors, $20 students.
