National Theatre Live: Frankenstein (2011) Online

First of all the experience of "almost" being there was really unique... the sound in the cinema was up nice and loud so you really FELT the sound like you would in the theatre.... and what a brilliant way for thousands of people to enjoy the performances of the National Theatre....

Okay so now on to the play itself... WOW!!! The set design and staging were wonderful, innovative, with minimalist hints of all the locales... Danny Boyle's direction was inspired and energetic...but the ACTING, well really something to behold...

The premise here is an actor's dream.. the actors switch nightly in playing the roles of Victor and the Creature. This is truly inspired, especially since the characters are each a side of the other. Before the performance there was a short behind-the-scenes film, and Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch talked about how they approached the roles... but seeing is believing.. The performance I saw was with Cumberbatch at the Creature and Miller as Victor Frankenstein.. both were very good, but the show belongs to the Creature... and Cumberbatch was INCREDIBLE! the sheer physical demands of the performance had me tired just watching!! The play really focuses on the Creature's growth from stumbling, grunting "thing" to a fully-formed thinking being. "Frankenstein" is one of my favorite novels and I think I have seen just about every film adaptation, and at least one other stage version. Highly recommended!!!

As the countdown to Halloween started to begin,I decided to take a look at the listings of a local cinema for one-off screenings of Horror titles.Originally planning to watch The Exorcist, (which has been sitting on my shelf for years,waiting to get watched on DVD!) for the first time,I suddenly noticed that a screening was going to be held for Danny Boyle's filmed on stage adaptation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.Since having found Boyle's 2013 movie Trance to be a fantastic Neo-Noir,I decided that it would be a good time to see Boyle bring the monster (or as it is named here "creature") to life.

The plot:

Delighted with being the first ever person to bring someone back from the dead, (thanks to robbing body parts and a corpse from a grave yard) scientist Victor Frankenstein is horrified by the appearance of his creature, (who Victor decides not to name) which leads to Frankenstein throwing his creation into the wilderness,in the hope that it will rot away and fade from his memory.

Discovering a survival instinct,the creature picks itself up from the ground,and begins to search for his creator.Attempting to learn human skills,and to also make friends,the creature finds himself being beaten up by the local residence,due to him looking like "a monster".Running into a local blind man,the creature is shocked to find someone who does not judge him on his appearance.Getting taught to read and write,the creature's only friendship is destroyed,when the blind man's family pay him a visit,and kick the creature out for looking like a beast.

With now having the full skills to talk,read ,write and lie,the creature goes in search of Victor Frankenstein,in the hope that his creator will build for him a woman.

View on the film:

Avoiding the tradition of using wide panning shots that show the audience at a concert/show,director Danny Boyle and cinematography Kevin French, (who both reunited for the 2012 Olympics opening) instead place the viewer intimately close to the stage,which along with allowing the actors performances to pull the audience into the tale,also allows Boyle and French to slowly unravel Frankenstein's industrial wasteland across the screen.

Backed by the superb Industrial hum from Underworld,Boyle and French cover the film in metallic bronze to show the decaying post- industrial revolution world that the creature rises from,with "fresh" colours and objects (such as green grass),being burnt away across the screen.Contrasting the metallic colours,Boyle also shows an excellent skill in casting a Gothic Horror shadow across the screen,with black becoming a dominating set colour,as Victor Frankenstein,the creature,and those nearest to them descend into hell. Along with the darkening colours,Boyle also shows an unflinching eye for Horror,with Boyle using excellent stilted camera moves to push the audience face first into Franenstein and his creature's deadly outbursts of violence,and betrayal.

Taking much longer to reach the screen/stage than originally expected, (Boyle and the writer originally planned to bring Victor Frankenstein alive in the 90's)the screenplay by Nick Dear shows no sign of rust gathering up on Frankenstein's mesmerising creation.Using the first 30 minutes to display the creature gradually "building" his own personality,Dear places the "voice" and troubled psychological aspect of the creature right at the centre of the adaptation,with Dear smartly showing Frankenstein and the towns people's interactions from the outcast point of view of the creature.Whilst the screenplay does show that Frankenstein and the towns people turn the creature into "the monster" that they fear,due to being focused on the permanently damaged exterior and not the welcoming, and repairable interior of the creature.

Despite showing that Victor Frankenstein and the towns people are the cause of the creatures transformation into a monster,Dear also shows that he is unafraid to show the creature in a horrifically violent light,with Dear's delicate building up of Victor and the towns folk Gothic melodrama being burnt to the ground,as the creature strikes at the very heart of what Frankenstein holds dear.

Playing the role for the second,and final time (both actors would switch between playing Frankenstein and the creature every other day) Benedict Cumberbatch gives an unexpectedly subtle,vulnerable performance,with the opening of the film solely focusing on the creature rising from the dead,allowing Cumberbatch to place the viewer deep inside the skin of the character,thanks to Cuberbatch slowly showing the creature transform from being speechless and native,to using human skills such as lying to his deadly advantage.

Contrasting Cumberbatch's quiet,subtle performance,Johnny Lee Miller gives a delightfully wild and wicked performance as Victor Frankenstein,as Miller shows that the only drive Frankenstein has in life is to satisfy his own ego,with Victor ignoring any ethical or psychological "flaws" in his mad desire,until it is too late,and a monster rises from the ashes of a creature.

Last night I saw the second screening of Frankenstein. The movie theatre showed the play twice, two weeks apart, the first time with Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature, the second time with Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature.

Since it was my second time watching the play I was really interested to see how the different actors would interpret the monster. JLM initially interpreted the monster initially hesitant and drooling, basing his on monster his two year old son. BC based his monster on stroke victims, so less drolling but also less overall control of his limbs. Amazing how the same yet different.

I'd have to say, after watching both castings, I am slightly biased towards Jonny Lee Miller as the better monster and Benedict Cumberbatch the better Doctor. The play started with the creature "being born" and then learning to walk. When BC played the monster, that was the only part of the play I didn't like. BC took nearly 20 minutes of flopping around the stage, which was very "arty" but a bit too long. For JLM his beginning was much shorter, which I appreciated, as it brought the rest of the fantastic dialogue in sooner. (Or maybe I was just more prepared for the opening this time around).

For myself it was the scene with just the monster and the doctor talking in the mountain cave that was phenomenal with this casting! When the monster asks the doctor to make him a bride, Jonny Lee Miller brought such a "theatrical" flare to the creature, it reminded me of both Shakespeare and Phantom of the Opera. BC as the neurotic doctor was spot on as you could almost follow his decent into madness.

I hope they end up putting this filming out on DVD just so I can rewatch this over and over (They probably won't, but I can dream!) So well done!

Be warned: I am an English teacher who loves this book and both of the lead actors. Continue at your own risk.

I had the extraordinary privilege recently of finally seeing the Nick Dear production of Frankenstein, a live theater production directed by Danny Boyle in 2011.

For those who have been living under a rock, this special production is actually very closely based on the original novel by Mary Shelley and is remarkable in that the two leading men, Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, alternated the two lead roles on every performance. This was a tribute to their acting skills and a nod to the fact that the main characters, Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, are very much character foils for each other. Due to "an unprecedented audience demand" National Theater Live and Fathom (the producing companies) decided to do a film encore for Halloween week 2014 in Regal theaters across the US. Both performances were available.

The film opened with some behind the scenes commentary that was really interesting, but I'm not going into detail on that right now because, let's face it, if you're reading this, you want to see my reaction to the performance itself, not just me fangirling over the actors...so moving on.

It starts the same way the description for the play starts, a circular embryonic sac with a figure inside moving slightly. As the music gets increasingly dramatic, so do the movements of the actor inside the sac. Eventually a hand appears and with some dramatic lighting a nearly naked Benedict Cumberbatch emerged and flopped onto the ground. What followed were at least ten minutes (it seemed like) of him stretching, spasming, and struggling on the floor. He is covered in realistic looking bloody scars, is making pitiful noises and looks as repulsive as that particular man is capable of looking. When I first see him, my instinct was "eww" but after a few minutes of watching him struggle to control his limbs and gasp with the effort to stand, I found myself whispering, "You can do it, come on" and sincerely meaning it. That's acting, ladies and gentlemen.

Victor (Miller) comes in, is visibly repulsed by what is writhing on the floor and reaching for him in supplication, throws a robe at his creation, and leaves. For those who are a bit unfamiliar with the text, basically, the play just jumped into the inciting incident and skipped all of the boring prologue and extraneous frame story. We then slightly divert again from the original story because the play follows the Creature's story instead of Victor's. This makes a lot of sense since Victor pretty much collapses in the book and does nothing useful at all until he sees the Creature again anyway.

Cumberbatch provided an inspiring performance as the Creature. We feel his pain as he is abused, experiences the first beauties of nature, goes through friendship, education, betrayal, and the beginnings of revenge. His quickly developing character is clearly showcased and completely believable, unlike most movie adaptations where the Creature seems to almost wake up super intelligent automatically or to wake up stupid and never progress. The story line follows that of Shelley's book and gives the audience a clear picture of his complex and thoroughly developed character.

The conversation and confrontation between Victor and the Creature was enough to give me chills. I have nothing more to say on the subject.

I particularly appreciated how they approached the Bride scene. A lot more detail in how the Creature feels about himself, doubt about how his bride might work out, and his desperation for a companion. More brilliant acting there. A special shout out should also go to Miller's performance here--you really get the mad-scientist vibe as he seems to quite literally wear himself to the bone in just a few scenes.

They chose a brave interpretation of the Creature/Elizabeth scene in the bedroom. Since that section of the book is told through Victor's perspective who is not actually in the room, it's always been a big question what happened in there. I LOVED what they went with. The Creature introduces himself to Elizabeth and slowly gets her comfortable to the idea of what he is (also, in this version, Victor has confessed to Elizabeth what he did. Definitely not in the book but since it led to this great scene, I don't mind so much) and explains what Victor did to him. Elizabeth shows him pity and sympathy and promises to take his side and to talk to Victor about his responsibilities and immoral choices. She tries to get to know him better and he explains what he has learned from humanity and from Victor about breaking promises...and then he breaks one of his own in his quest for revenge for the loss of his bride. Here's the brave part: before the Creature kills Elizabeth, he rapes her and Victor walks in at that moment. I believe this is totally plausible even if it wasn't in what I remember of the book.

The ending once again cut out the unnecessary frame story with the ship's captain.

--I also watched the other version which was brilliant, but I preferred Cumberbatch as Creature with Miller as the mad scientist. Cumberbatch as Frankenstein seemed to have quite a bit of his Sherlock persona slipping into it.

In conclusion. Excellent book, excellent performances, and I really can't wait to teach it again next semester. Especially if I can show either/both of these while doing so...I think I'd walk over broken glass to do that.

My only wish with seeing this on the big screen is " I wish I had seen it live"..

My daughter took me to see it at the Luna cinema in Leederville on Sunday and the viewing was Jonny lee miller as Frankenstein and Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor.

I was moved, by Jonny's performance as he takes you past the monster and you see a man in search of love and acceptance. I was at loss for words, you cannot fault the mans performance..Had I got to know Frankenstein, I would have taken him in and befriended him? maybe.

Benedict Cumberbatch was very good as Victor also, a mad genius, a tortured soul with no one recognizing his brilliance and what he could do, or believed he was as good as God. He found the secret to life itself. He made man.

You feel sorry for him, yet angry as well, He disregards friends and family in his desperate pursuit of his monster, and will do anything and all to destroy it, not taking into account that his monster has become educated and only wants to be accepted in main society.. something we all crave, inside us there is a bit of victor/Frankenstein. If there is one thing to do this weekend check out your local cinema and see if they are screening this gem, it will blow you away.

It was a few years since this show got lots of headlines, not least because of the big names involved on-stage and off; not being much of a cinema goer (the crowds), I didn't see this then but a repeat set of screenings at a local independent cinema recently got me there. I wasn't sure what I expected, but the production itself wasn't totally it. The film opened with a rather self-indulgent interview with those involved, before we launch into a very physical with the monster (Miller in the production I saw) discovering life for the first time. It is a sequence that perhaps goes on too long, but speaks of the bravery and dedication of the actor to the performance – a factor which is very much the heart of the whole piece.

From here we get an aspect which is one of the weaker things – the unnecessary showiness of it. A very 'Broadway Musical' train moves onto the stage and it is one of the bigger touches than felt a bit out of place – like Boyle practicing for the Olympics perhaps? There are too many moments like this through the whole 2 hours and, while spectacular, they add less than you would want for how they often occur. Some work very well in support of the story, but too often they seem just for the sake of showing the audience how big everything is. Regarding the music, this works and I enjoyed the size of the music, but for me the production is never better than when it is simply two characters talking – mostly the lead two, but also some scenes with the monster and others. This is mostly due to the cast, because the writing is variable; at times it is engaging and dramatic, but then it has lines of attempted comedy thrown in here and there – mostly not working.

The camera wisely doesn't worry about showing us the audience, or look at the stage across the audience, but rather lets us be part of that experience and keeps us close to the action and not breaking out to a wider view aside from when the action is slightly off the stage and in the audience area. This helps catch the performances, which are strong in the leads. Miller is great as the creature – it is hard for me to imagine him playing the other role. He is brave with the physicality and also compelling with his more developed self. Cumberbatch fits Frankenstein well; again I would struggle to see him in the other role. He has some weaker material to sell, but he plays well opposite Miller. Johnson is good with him too, while Harris is a good name to have involved, but has little in the way of character. Unfortunately outside of these, the supporting turns are surprisingly weaker than expected; particularly whoever the boy was that played William.

All told though, it is the performances of Miller and Cumberbatch (particularly when together) that stay in the mind more than the set flourishes, misjudged humor, or stagey supporting turns; and on this basis the production is well worth seeing – and for me it would be interesting to see it again with the roles reversed.

An intense, must-see thrilling performance from both Cumberbatch and Miller. The dialogues filled with static chemistry, a beautiful and perfect mix between beauty and horror, a destabilized yet animated stage that shows all facets of life and death. A hypnotizing and cutting-edge play, a real work of art that is absolutely not to be missed.

(Updated after watching the version in which Jonny Lee Miller plays the creation, having swapped roles with Benedict Cumberbatch, who now plays the creator) - I still can't believe that this one took 4 years, in this day and age, to reach these shores. Having said that, I'm real glad that it does not look or feel jaded / dated to that extent.

The prod and the sound design, the intimate camera-work and the score remains the same, along with the rest of the cast (most of them) reprising their characters for this roundabout. Almost everything, and if there are differences, they might have been too minor to warrant attention, especially since I watched the earlier version of this just 2 weeks previously.

However, there is no diluting the effect of all the shocking events that do transpire during the tale's runtime.

In spite of the fact that I've read and seen many adaptations put together (I also remember the Kenneth Branagh attempt on this, with De Niro as the creation), the way the screenplay has been strung together packs a punch every time it delves into the darkness of the human spirit, the depths to which we plumb, and result in another plumbing the same depths.

There is no subtlety in caling out the hypocrisy at play, and that IS a good thing, since it needs to be called out and focused on, in the limited runtime this work of art has. There is no doubt cast on who the bad soul (yep, soul) is, and how that one soul pulls the strings.

Power at play, especially creationist, always evokes the analogy 'giving a baby a loaded gun', and then regretting / complaining about the consequences.

One of my friends remarked that it was more apt the way it was before, since Cumberbatch's Frankenstein was not as powerful as Millers', and Miller's creation/creature was relatively more soft and mellow that our sympathy was with the creature, not accompanied by the fear, disgust and revulsion that we ought to have felt as well, the way it did when Cumberbatch rendered his interpretation of the same character. I agreed with him to a large extent, but did not mind the fact that our sympathies led our emotions rather than it being the other way around.

What would the point have been of another interpretation, if it was more of the same?

These (following) streams of thoughts are based on viewing the version in which Benedict Cumberbatch plays the creation, and Lee Miller his creator.

The story of Frankenstein, as one knows, has been told many times over. The biggest thing this production had going for it, other than the fact that it had Boyle, fresh off of many successes, directing a play such as this, was that both the actors playing contemporary versions of, ahem, a detective who need not remain nameless, in BBC and CBS productions of the same (to be fair, the latter is much too recent, so the coincidence factor is not all that great/wide), varying in the number of episodes and their respective run-times as well. I'm a fan of both series, with each having completed 3 seasons (the CBS rendering with Lee Miller is still going strong on its 3rd, but with 24 45-min episodes to film for each season, while retaining the overall quality, it's not easy going for them.

I'll update this review after the version in which the actors swap parts.

For now, this one was superb, with each actor taking center-stage alternatively as the play progressed. Cumberbatch owns the first act, being born, discarded, and then spending an year with a blind old man who teaches him to read, think and debate. As the play progressed, it was indeed amazing to watch the rotating stage change for each scene in each act, along with listening to the fantastic score enhancing the quality of the production.

Each transition was seamless, and I, for one, was held spellbound by the fact that the actors, especially the leads, could deliver their lines with such conviction and memory. I am a big fan of improvisation, but somehow felt that learning lines and delivering them in character seemed to be very daunting, and having these great actors making it look and sound easy was like watching a master at work, much like watching the great Timothy Spall play Mr. Turner a few weeks back at the cinema.

Going in, I only knew of the main leads, but was surprised to see a pre-Skyfall Naomie Harris as Frankenstein's wife, the only human other than the blind old man who dared to get close to her husband's creation. I confess to being a tad disappointed by some seemingly- stilted line-readings from George Harris, who played M. Frankenstein, who I had seen earlier playing the character Kingsley in the Harry Potter movies, in which his performance and casting seemed pretty apt.

The ending was pitch-perfect, with each character irrevocably linked to the other, needing one another to survive, though they are self- sworn to cause the other's destruction.

A wonderful opportunity afforded to catch this on the big screen, that should not be missed.