Movie Review: Frankenstein

Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor Frankenstein and Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature. Photo / Catherine Ashmore

The newest production of the NT Live* series is a paradox: the most thrillingly theatrical of all we've seen so far, it's also the most richly cinematic. Director Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire; 127 Hours) has form in the theatre - he directed shows for the Royal Shakespeare in the 90s - but he brings all his film-maker's bells and whistles to this project. The camera swoops, probes, circles, zooms. Previous shows used a static, studio-camera approach to faithfully
record stage action; here we see far more than the theatre audience could imagine.

To say this Frankenstein is far from the movie cliche of the Boris Karloff era is to understate matters: Boyle remarks in an introductory featurette that "the movies have robbed [the Creature] of his voice" and the play, which writer Nick Dear calls "a creation myth for the science age", conscientiously redresses the balance. This Creature, once he finds his voice, becomes the play's most disturbingly eloquent character.

Dear's economical script turns Mary Shelley's busy novel into a lean and allusive drama. The dialogue is a heady blend of drawing room drama and fevered proto-sci-fi fantasy, seasoned with poetic flights of fancy and, perhaps as a result, there are several moments of unintended humour, verging on banality. And it sometimes feels that the set pieces have not been stitched into a coherent whole. But what set pieces! As an eye-popping, gasp-out-loud entertainment the
production delivers in spades. Whole sets rise from below, drop from above, or spin into view on a turntable. A (sometimes literally) dazzling lighting design evokes the scientist's electromagnetic breakthroughs.

But this play is less about creation than aftermath: the Creature comes to life in a brilliantly physical opening, if overlong, birth sequence and the drama tracks his evolution into his creator's nemesis. Along the way it bristles with ideas - about love, free will, scientific hubris and the nature of life itself. It's a spellbinding experience.

* NT Live is A project of London's National Theatre in which productions are filmed and broadcast live to cinemas. We get them here a few weeks later. In this production Miller and Cumberbatch alternate in the lead roles: Miller plays the Creature in the first run; Cumberbatch from April 28. There are four screenings only of each version at the Bridgeway, Rialto Auckland and Tauranga, Matakana Rialto and Lido Hamilton.

LOWDOWN

Stars: 5/5
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Jonny Lee Miller
Director: Danny Boyle
Running time: 145 mins
Rating: Exempt
Verdict: Jawdropping and exhilarating

-TimeOut