We critics know everything about the theatre. We see the best shows, we get the finest seats in the house and we’re occasionally treated to a fuming glass of vin ordinaire to lubricate our ruminations. And yet what do we really know?
We critics know everything about the theatre. We see the best shows, we get the finest seats in the house and we’re occasionally treated to a fuming glass of vin ordinaire to lubricate our ruminations. And yet what do we really know? Last week a family funeral forced me to miss the press night of Frankenstein and when I logged on to the NT website I found it proudly boasting that the entire run was a slam-dunk sell-out. Rather than haggling with a tout on the South Bank I phoned the NT box office in desperation and was offered a ‘standing ticket’ on the spot. A standing ticket? I’d always assumed the Olivier was an all-seater stadium. It turns out that the rear of the circle includes a deep gallery where vertical spectators can be accommodated at all shows for five quid.
So along I went, and up I climbed, and aslant the dim-lit passage I felt my way until I found a comfortable perch high above the stage. Within moments I realised why the National has been so shy about selling tickets for this star-studded bonanza. Even for a fiver it’s a terrible rip-off.
The play starts with an unclothed male figure emerging zit-like through a sliced trampoline and landing with a bump on the floor. He starts groaning and slobbering noisily. He also does some writhing. Writhing, groaning and slobbering are then joined by a new artistic flavour: twitching. And with this ample store of expressive materials at his fingertips the naked escapologist (played by Jonny Lee Miller) proceeds to impersonate an electrocuted starfish and to jerk and croak and crawl his way around the stage for what seems like two hours but may only be 35 minutes.
What does it mean, this snivelling, spasmodic floor show? Perhaps Mr Miller is playing a character who’s just been born. Perhaps he’s playing a character with terrible cramp. Perhaps he’s playing himself and has just phoned his agent and discovered he can’t break his contract without incurring severe financial penalties.
Eventually, the show perks up and a gang of thugs attack Mr Miller with cudgels and insults and, in so doing, accidentally school him in the rudiments of speech. His first words, ‘Piss off’, are uttered in the next scene to a kindly old chap who offers him food and shelter. The contrast between the expletive’s vulgarity and the friendly milieu in which it’s uttered raises a very welcome laugh. Make the most of it. It could be an hour before the next one.
Mr Miller, we eventually realise, is playing the prefab freak created by the deranged anatomical DIY expert, Viktor Frankenstein. After much early drooling this Creature suddenly gains almost complete control of his vocal equipment, although he hangs on to his hiccupping lisp as if determined to give us an account of Derek Jacobi’s account of Robert Graves’s account of Suetonius’ account of the emperor Claudius. No wonder it all feels fifth-hand.
The director Danny Boyle has pumped up the action with a number of flashy and disunited stage effects but he hasn’t spotted the spatial impediment with the Olivier. It’s not so much a theatre as a beach or a field. It needs contours and limitations. Unbounded, it sends the action flying off into its vague, vast spaces like a punctured balloon. With a decent play this is less problematic but Nick Dear has delivered a script which even a critic who dislikes poultry metaphors would have to classify as a two-stone Norfolk gobbler with all the trimmings.
The pace varies wildly. After a sluggish opening we get a splurge of frenetic action. The Creature begs Viktor to give him a mate. Viktor refuses, then relents, then builds the Creature-ette, then shows her to the Creature, then murders her in a fit of jealousy. Breakneck storytelling like this leaves no room for the delicate formulation of feeling. Later the Creature rapes a woman and kills her with a few savage thrusts of his pelvis but without even taking off his trousers. Obtuse hysterical absurdities are allowed to trump pathos and drama. What a shame to see such a talented and experienced company lumbering around this literary junkyard.
I love Danny Boyle and I’m a huge fan of Benedict Cumberbatch whose unsettling features — sly, innocent, romantic and cruel — seem to lie somewhere between the polarities of the snake and the cherub. He approaches the cliché-encrusted role of Viktor by turbo-charging it with syllabic aspirates. The line ‘I will not!’ becomes ‘Eye-high whee-heel no-hot!’
The stars of this show have apparently arranged a Granita-style deal whereby each takes the other’s role on alternate nights. If I were Ben and Jonny, I’d seal a new compact over roast beef and Burgundy: feign illness and leave it to the understudies.
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