Sutton House – until 3 November
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
3***
Tea Break Theatre’s immersive Frankenstein at Sutton House is full of ambition but doesn’t hit the heights of its source material.
Sutton House, dimly lit after dark, is the main spook factor in this production. Writer/director Katharine Armitage’s feminist adaptation begins with a story sharing session sitting around the room on sleeping bags – a nod to the female squatters who saved Sutton House from demolition in the 1980s. There’s also a fabulous mix tape of 80s music that took me back to school discos. The audience are invited to share their stories – and sadly THAT is the scariest moment of the night. The looks of horror as people thought they had to contribute were something to behold. Luckily the cast begin to tell stories of a shared dream that gives the bare bones of how Elizabeth and Justine came to live with Victor Frankenstein before the cast lead the audience off to the Great Chamber in character.
After working with Justine (Katy Helps) on the theory of transplanting organs across blood groups, Victor (Jeff Scott) takes the work a step too far in his quest to reanimate the dead. The death of Victor’s mother looms large over Elizabeth (Jennifer Tyler) as well, with her bending over backwards to keep everyone in the house happy because of her guilt over causing the death. Armitage takes all the implicit facts about the two women in Mary Shelley’s novel and forces them into the play with a sledgehammer. Tyler and Helps do their best with the script, but Justine’s character is cold and strident while Elizabeth is overloaded with every cliché about women in destructive and abusive relationships you can think of. Victor is written as a pathetic, tormented genius while Henry (Chris Dobson) is basically the comic relief/expositional mouthpiece. I’ve seen female Creatures before, so that is nothing new – but Molly Small gives the Creature a less monstrous, more calculating feel in a sympathetic and measured performance (and in another wonderful 80s touch – she’s dressed like (a slightly conservative) Madonna in her Like A Virgin era).
The production involves the audience wearing coloured wristbands and following cast members holding the matching ribbons. Most of the time we are together but there are times when a small group is with each character or pair of characters. I’m not sure what was happening while we watched Victor playing video games, but I think Harry may have met the Creature, from their dialogue near the end of the play. It would have been nice to see what Small did with the Creature before she learned about humanity and to see her Creature evolve, but my group only saw her gasping her first breath (in a very low key, undramatic scene that had us reminiscing about the antiseptic aroma in the room rather than talking about the action) before seeing her again, fully coherent and meeting poor young William. The idea of moving around the house is excellent but would work better in a house with wider corridors, where some dialogue could continue as the audience move. As it is, there are stilted, awkward moments of silence as scenes begin and end, stretching what could be a promising short play into an unwieldy and snail-paced slog. The staging in the Great Chamber is problematic at times because of the need to filter the audience into the room. The big confrontation/intervention between Elizabeth, Henry and Victor, with the chairs in a row could have been fantastic, but – sitting in a row, with Victor sitting at the end, arms crossed and sulking – it was reminiscent of an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show with Joanna Lumley as guest host.
The ending is a little woolly, but again has lots of promise, with Small’s Creature’s emotional berating of Victor becoming an admonition of the audience and society in general and our complicity in ostracising the “other”.
The cast give committed performances, and with a few tweaks, the script shows promise. Tea Break Theatre have used the tricky spaces and layout of Sutton House the best they could under the circumstances, and this is an entertaining night, even if there are no real thrills and chills.