Puppet Stage Tour Adaptation of “Frankenstein” from Blackeyed Theater Company

It’s been two hundred years since Mary Shelley dreamed up her vision of the creature of Frankenstein’s surgical sewing skills of assembling dead tissue. The popularity of the story was first engendered by a stage adaptation before the novel itself gained notice. And it is the filmic versions of the story that have driven its notoriety ever since. And now Frankenstein once again goes on the stage, breaking ground in the imagination, in the form of the monster as a puppet, though this is no ordinary puppet show.

The new adaptation production of the classic story by the Blackeyed Theater Company, based in Bracknell, is launching a five month tour in England. With the story adapted by John Ginman, this stage performance version features live music and outsized theatricality, with the central feature of the creature of Victor Frankenstein’s handiwork performed by puppetry, conceived and designed by puppet-maker Yvonne Stone, the puppet master behind the breakthrough “War Horse” stage puppet which propelled the National Theatre hit and a resulting Stephen Spielberg movie.

This staging of the creature of Frankenstein is 6 feet 4 inches tall and is operated by up to three actors at a time, and for the innovative puppeteer who studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, the chance to be part of a different interpretation of the 1818 classic story of science bringing life to the inanimate seemed a dead on natural for puppetry. “As the electricity enters the creature the puppeteers operating can breathe life into him in a way a human actor portrayal could not” and the looming stature and other world nature of the creature provides a vision in the rules of puppetry not experienced in normal perception.

The production is directed by Eliot Giuralarocca with music composed by Ron McAllister. The cast includes Ben Warwick as Victor Frankenstein, Lara Cowin as Elizabeth, Max Gallagher as Henry Clerval, and Ashley Sean Cook as Capt. Walton with Louis Labovitch performing the Voice of the Creature. The theatrical tour will make stops at venues around the country for one night to three night performances through March 2017. Tickets are £12 and the two hour show is suitable for ages 11 and up. For schedule see Blackeyed Theatre Company website. Photo by Alex Harvey-Brown