Frankenstein

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Frankensteina new play by Nick Dearbased on the novel by Mary ShelleySponsored bySuitable onlyfor 15yrs Frankenstein Programme Cover.indd 1Supported by a groupof individual donors25/01/2011 10:22

Frankensteina new play by Nick Dearbased on the novel by Mary ShelleySupported by a groupof individual donors56222 NT - Frankenstein TEXT.indd 125/10/2013 11:24

Characters, in order of speakingthe CreatureBENEDICT CUMBERBATCH or JONNY LEE MILLERvictor FrankensteinJONNY LEE MILLER or BENEDICT CUMBERBATCHGretel, a prostitute ELLA SMITHGustav, a beggar JOHN KILLORANKlaus, a beggar STEVEN ELLIOTTagatha de lacey LIZZIE WINKLERde lacey, her father-in-law KARL JOHNSONFelix de lacey, his son DANIEL MILLARelizabeth lavenza, Victor’s fiancée NAOMIE HARRISwilliam Frankenstein, Victor’s brotherHAYDON DOWNING / WILLIAM NYE / JARED RICHARDM. Frankenstein, father of Victor and William GEORGE HARRISClarice, Elizabeth’s maid ELLA SMITHservants of the Frankenstein householdDANIEL INGS, MARTIN CHAMBERLAINRab, a crofter MARK ARMSTRONGewan, his uncle JOHN STAHLFemale Creature ANDREEA PADURARIUConstable JOHN KILLORANensemble JOSIE DAXTERother parts played by members of the CompanyUnderstudiesMARK ARMSTRONG (Klaus/Gustav)MARTIN CHAMBERLAIN (M. Frankenstein/de lacey/ewan)JOSIE DAXTER (Gretel/agatha/Clarice/Female Creature)STEVEN ELLIOTT (Creature)DANIEL INGS (victor Frankenstein/Rab)JOHN KILLORAN (Felix/servants)DANIEL MILLAR (Constable)LIZZIE WINKLER (elizabeth)Frankena new play by NICK DEARbased on the novel by MARY SHELLEYFrankenstein Programme.indd 228/01/2011 17:40

Director DANNY BOYLESet Designer MARK TILDESLEYCostume Designer SUTTIRAT LARLARBLighting Designer BRUNO POETMusic & Sound Score UNDERWORLDDirector of Movement TOBY SEDGWICKFight Director KATE WATERSMusic Associate ALEX BARANOWSKISound Design UNDERWORLD & ED CLARKECompany Voice Work JEANNETTE NELSONProduction Manager SACHA MILROYStaff Director ABBEY WRIGHTStage Manager DAVID MARSLANDDeputy Stage Manager FIONA BARDSLEYAssistant Stage Managers IAN CONNOP, VALERIE FOXCostume Supervisor CAROLINE WATERMANCostume Assistant LOUISE CASSETTARIProp Supervisor KIRSTEN SHIELLDeputy Production Managers MIKE DEVANEY & RICHARD EUSTACEProject Draughting NICK MURRAY & EMMA PILEProduction Assistant BETTINA PATELDigital Artist TIM BLAZDELLAssistant to the Lighting Designer JOHN McGARRIGLEAssistant to the Set Designer CHARLIE COBBMusic Supervisor MIKE GILLESPIESound Consultants JOHN NEWSHAM & TONY ANDREWS, FUNKTION ONECasting ALASTAIR COOMERProduction Photographer CATHERINE ASHMORELENGTH ABOUT 2 HOURS.There is no interval.Please check with front-of-house staff for accurate timing STAY AFTER THE PERFORMANCE AND VISITTHE OLIVIER BOOKSTALL AND BARS WORLD PREMIEREOlivier Theatre 22 February 2011Frankenstein issupported by asyndicate ofindividual donorsSponsored byensteinFrankenstein Programme.indd 304/03/2011 18:07

Platforms6pm (45 minutes) 3.50/ 2.50 T: 020 7452 3000Josephine Hart presents Romantic PoetryFriday 15 April, OlivierJosephine Hart’s star-studded readings bring the poetry alive withher astute observations and illuminating asides. Celebrating the great romanticgothic world of Frankenstein, she presents work byShelley, Byron and their Romantic contemporaries.Discover: National TheatreIn Depth: Mary Shelley10, 17, 24 MarchImmerse yourself in the world of the gothic novelist, discoveringwhat led her to write one of the earliest examples of ‘outsider fiction’.Artists and academics lead this short course, exploring Shelley’s lifeand the late 20th-century feminist and psychoanalytical studieswhich led to a renewed interest in her work.nationaltheatre.org.uk/indepth 50.00, including ticket to Frankenstein.T: 020 7452 3000DANNY BOYLEdirectsBroadcast on 17 and 24 Marchfor your nearest venue and to book tickets visitSuitable onlyfor 15yrs A digital programme for this event is on sale at 3 from ntlive.comNational Theatre LiveFrankenstein Programme.indd 404/03/2011 18:07

On sale from the NT Bookshop andfrom the Olivier Bookstall: the textof Nick Dear’s ‘Frankenstein’, publishedby Faber & Faber, plus the original bookby Mary Shellety, critical and backgroundreading – all part of a wide range oftheatre-related books, recordings and gifts.Open Monday to Saturday, 9.30am to10.45pm; Sunday 12pm to 6pm.T: 020 7452 3456E: bookshop@nationaltheatre.org.ukW: nationaltheatre.org.uk/bookshopThe National’s workshops areresponsible for, on this production:Armoury; Costume; Props & furniture;Scenic construction; Scenic lighting;Scenic painting;WigsPoster (image: dissection of the axillaby Joseph Maclise, courtesy of theThomas Fisher Rare Book Library,University of Toronto) designed byCharlotte Wilkinson.Programme designed byLisa JohnsonACCESSCopies of this cast list, in brailleor large print, are available fromthe Information Desk.Captioned performanceWednesday 13 April at 7.30pmAudio-described performancesFriday 15 April at 7.30pm, Saturday 16 Aprilat 2pm (Touch Tour at 12.30pm)The National Theatre would liketo acknowledge the support ofUS partner Bob BoyettNT ANNUAL FUNDGifts to the National Theatre’s AnnualFund support a range of activities both onand off the stage.To play your part, pleasedonate to the Annual Fund by calling 0207452 3254 or visiting nationaltheatre.org.uk/annualfundFrankenstein Programme.indd 5We are grateful to the followingindividuals for their generoussupport of this productionBasil AlkazziMr Jeremy AsherGraham & Joanna BarkerPeter BazalgetteMs Katie BradfordKristen Marée ClearyChristine CollinsMr & Mrs Leigh CollinsIan & Caroline CormackGeorgina & Bernie DavidAbby EdwardsSusan FletcherLucy FlemingMr Roger M FormbyJill Hackel & Andrzej ZarzyckiMrs Themy HamiltonPamela, Lady HarlechMalcolm HerringMorgan & Sarah JonesDonovan Kelly & Ann WoodMs Nicola J KerrHerbert Kretzmer OBESteven Larcombe &Sonya LeydekerWilliam MansfieldJill & Justin MansonPatrick MearsMaria O’DonoghueMr David PikeMichael Rose & Roz RosenblattAmanda SieffSteve & Linda SimpsonSue & Stuart StradlingMr & Mrs Max UlfaneMelissa UlfaneMarina VaizeyEdgar & Judith WallnerA M S WhiteGeorge & Patricia WhitePeter Wolff& an anonymous donor04/03/2011 18:07

Mary Shelley andFrankensteinRichard Holmes56222 NT - Frankenstein TEXT.indd 625/10/2013 11:24

Mary Shelley was still Mary Godwin, and only 18 yearsold, when she began the short, untitled horror story thateventually became one of the most influential novels ofthe 19th century: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.It was June 1816, and she was holidaying on the Lake ofGeneva with her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley, together withher step-sister Claire Clairmont who was also having anaffair, with their friend Lord Byron. It was quite a party.“The season was cold and rainy, and in the evening we crowdedround a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves withsome German stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into ourhands. Two other friends and myself agreed to write each a talefounded on some supernatural occurrence.”Less than two years later Mary’s “tale” had become afull-length novel, published anonymously by Lackington andCo, Finsbury Square, London in March 1818. At the timeit seemed so utterly strange and original, that reviewersthought it must have been written by Mary’s father, thenotorious anarchist philosopher William Godwin, orpossibly by the great romancer Sir Walter Scott, or evenby that dangerous atheist Percy Shelley. No one thoughtit could have possibly been written by a young womanstill in her teens.It is astonishing that it ever got written at all. During thosefew hectic months of composition, Mary’s step-sisterClaire bore Byron’s illegitimate baby secretly in Bath; herhalf-sister Fanny Imlay committed suicide with an opiumoverdose in a Welsh hotel; and Percy Shelley’s legal butabandoned wife Harriet Shelley, “being far advanced inpregnancy” (according to The Times), committed suicideby throwing herself into the Serpentine. On top of all this,Mary found that she herself was pregnant. The manuscriptof Frankenstein was delivered to the publisher just fiveweeks before her baby was born.That Mary persisted writing throughout these domesticdramas is truly remarkable. But then it is hardly surprisingthat painfully adult themes of physical birth and death,the terrors and responsibilities of parenthood, and ofthe agonies of the outcast or the unloved, suffused heryouthful imagination like blood.Many years later, in a Preface written for the popularedition of 1831, Mary gave a more Romantic explanationof how the novel came to be written. She said it was theresult of a single, terrible nightmare she had dreamt thatsummer, of some crazed young doctor, a “pale student ofunhallowed arts”, who had assembled a Creature fromhuman body parts, and brought it to life, thinking it wouldbe the first of a beautiful and perfect new race.Frankenstein Programme.indd 7 04/03/2011 18:07

In her nightmare she saw “the hideous phantasm of a manstretched out, and then, on the workings of some powerfulmachine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, halfvital motion.”No doubt this dream is authentic. All novelists treasuresuch Eureka moments. But Mary’s letters and journalsduring the period of actual writing, from summer 1816to autumn 1817, present a rather different picture ofthe young author at work. For a start, she was intenselyconscious of her literary inheritance from her parents.William Godwin was a best-selling thriller writer of pursuitnovels, such as Caleb Williams, as well as a philosopher;while her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, the great feministauthor of The Rights of Woman, had always wanted towrite a novel, but had only left an incomplete manuscriptentitled The Wrongs of Woman at the time of her death –actually giving birth to Mary – in 1797.So Mary Shelley felt she owed her parents a novel, andher husband Percy Shelley (they had married hastily afterHarriet’s death) was equally enthusiastic: “very anxious”,as she put it, “that I should prove myself worthy of myparentage.” He would discuss its themes as she researchedand wrote it, and later would help her editing it. The 170page manuscript of the novel as Mary originally draftedit, and then as Percy Shelley minimally edited it, have beenrecovered and now re-published by the Bodleian Library.The comparison of these manuscripts scotches any ideathat Percy Shelley somehow wrote it for her. It was alwaysMary Shelley’s amazing creation.Her journals also indicate how much, and how seriously,Mary drew from her reading and research. Although shehad never been to university (still forbidden to women),she had been fiercely educated at home by herphilosopher father, and at 18 she hadthe quick enquiring mind of a brilliantpost-graduate. She studied the latestLectures in Chemistry (1812) ofSir Humphry Davy, passages ofwhich were incorporated wordfor word into the novel; andalso the scientific poetry andspeculative evolutionary ideasof Erasmus Darwin (CharlesDarwin’s grandfather), notablyThe Temple of Nature, or theOrigin of Society (1801).Mary also drew fromconversations in Geneva withByron’s brilliant but unstable youngdoctor William Polidori (also asuicide); and later from Percy Shelley’sFrankenstein Programme.indd 809/03/2011 11:12

doctor in london, the radical surgeon sirwilliam lawrence. lawrence had writtenabout the anatomy practice of John hunter(whose eye-watering specimens can still beseen in the Royal College of surgeons); andalso knew of the galvanic theories of Giovannialdini, who used massive electric shocksin an attempt to revive a dead criminal,in a notorious public experiment held inlondon in 1803.lawrence was also engaged throughout 1816to 1819 in an acrimonious public debatewith another leading surgeon John abernethyabout the fundamental nature of life itself:was there some mysterious “life principle”? Top: Frontispiece illustration from the thirdedition (1831) of Mary shelley’s FrankensteinOpposite page: Mary wollstonecraftAbove: william Godwin Mary evans picture libraryFrankenstein Programme.indd 928/01/2011 17:40

was there a “vital spark”? did it produce the “mind” and“consciousness”? did this come from God or electricity?indeed, was there such a thing as a “human soul”?(lawrence thought definitely not.) this “vitalism debate”as it was known, was being widely discussed in suchjournals as the Quarterly Review, and by such authors asColeridge in his notes towards a theory of life.all these scientific speculations shaped the radical wayMary invented both the Creature, and his visionaryscientific creator,victor Frankenstein. as for the Creature,his mind is a blank. he has no retained memories fromthe previous life of his transplanted brain. he has noknowledge, no language, no conscience. he is, in a sense,perfectly innocent. perhaps his first experience is simplythat of pain. his ideas of friendship, of speech and reading,of books and history, of love and moral responsibility, areformed as a child would form them, cumulatively by trialand error, but at increasing and painful speed.he is soon cursed by the discovery that he is hideous,not beautiful; that he is loathed not loved; that he isrejected by everyone who meets him, even eventually byhis Creator. Moreover he is an outcast, with profoundlongings for affection and sexual love that are fatallyfrustrated. he is, suggests Mary shelley, like a fallen angelfrom Milton’s paradise lost. but a vengeful angel too.Mary is equally fascinated by the obsessive character ofvictor Frankenstein, arguably the first fictional creation ofa professional scientist in literature. It has been suggestedthat young Frankenstein is partly modelled on shelley asa rebellious undergraduate at oxford (he was expelledfor atheism); but also on humphry davy and williamlawrence; and even on a mad German physicist, oneJohann Ritter of Munich, who died “insane” in 1810.however this may be, he is still Mary’s unique creation: astrange brilliant man, supremely inventive and skilful, anidealist who wants to “benefit all mankind”; but who isalso arrogant, obsessive, and even autistic in his humanrelations, noticeably with his fiancée elizabeth. withoutintending it (for he too is “innocent”) Frankensteinproduces a catastrophe, a powerful and vindictiveCreature who – if he breeds – may wreak havoc over thewhole globe. It is this stereotype of the “scientist”, thecrazed man in the white coat, that the novel has set loose– for good or ill – in so much subsequent science fictionliterature.In fact the first 1818 edition of the novel ran to amere 500 copies. It was, significantly enough, the earlytheatrical adaptations which first popularised the book.presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein was first stagedat the english opera house in July 1823, and opened to Frankenstein Programme.indd 1028/01/2011 17:40

Percy Shelley Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS56222 NT - Frankenstein TEXT.indd 1125/10/2013 11:24

scandalous publicity (“do not take your wives, do not takeyour daughters, do not take your families”) and to hugeaudiences.Mary shelley herself attended in the stalls:“Lo and behold! I found myself famous! Frankensteinhas had prodigious success as a drama. in the earlyperformances all the ladies fainted and hubbub ensued!”there were five separate stage versions in the 1820s, whichwere taken to paris and eventually to new york. It wasthese that really made the novel and the novelist famous.subsequently there have been over ninety theatrical andcinema adaptations and parodies, including the famous1930s boris Karloff film.but unlike the original novel, theserarely allow the Creature to speakmore than a few grunts. whereasfor Mary shelley, the Creaturebecomes paradoxically the mostarticulate of all her creations.starting with a few halting words,the Creature ends by deliveringgreat soaring arias of speech,appealing for affection, for justice,for rights: human Rights.Mary shelley had returned toengland after percy shelley’s deathby drowning in the bay of speziain 1822. she published severalmore novels and short stories, only one of which, thelast Man (1826), achieved any measure of success. shenever remarried, and died quietly in 1851, being buriedunromantically in bournemouth. of her four children, onlyone – percy Florence shelley – survived into adulthood.but this does not include what she called – proudly enough– “my hideous progeny”: who is probably immortal. Richard Holmes, January 2011Richard holmes is the author of the age of wonder:how the Romantic Generation discovered the beautyand terror of science (harper press, 2008)the original manuscript of Mary shelley’s Frankensteinis on display at the bodleian library in oxford until27 March 2011. there is a permanent online exhibitionat shelleysghost.bodleian.ox.ac.ukAbove: Vision of the Deluge, from Milton’s Paradise Lost, by henry Fuseli agnew’s, london, uK / the bridgeman art libraryRight: rehearsal photograph by Catherine ashmoreFrankenstein Programme.indd 1228/01/2011 17:40

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From the director’s scrapbook56222 NT - Frankenstein TEXT.indd 1525/10/2013 11:24

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Armand Marie LeroiThe villa by a Swiss lake, the chill summer of 1816, a log fire, Byron, Shelley,ghost stories – everyone knows the origins of Frankenstein. But whoremembers the vermicelli?As Mary Shelley later told it, the talk that night was of natural philosophy.Luigi Galviani was mentioned. In 1791 the Bolognese scientist haddemonstrated the existence of “animal electricity” by making a dead frog’slegs twitch. John Polidori, Byron’s physician, who was also there, would haveknown all about that.We don’t know who mentioned the vermicelli. But weknow where it came from. Dr Darwin, someone said, had managed to bringa piece of pasta to life.Erasmus Darwin – physician, polymath, inventor and proto-evolutionist (hisgrandson, Charles, would deny any influence) – was just the man to havetried the experiment. He was that un-English thing, a Romantic scientist. InGermany Naturphilosophie, with its all-embracing systems in which Beauty,Spirit and Truth were combined in ways that made the men of the RoyalSociety shudder, was all the rage. For Darwin, Romantic science meantoutlining his theories in rhyming couplets, copiously footnoted, and illustratedby Fuseli and Blake. A sample gives the flavour:“I absolutely nauseate Darwin’s poem” said Samuel Taylor Coleridge of anearlier effort – and one can see his point.But the animate vermicelli? Mary Shelley admits that their recollectionwas shaky, and so it proves. It’s a muddled account of a passage in Darwin’sTemple of Nature (1803) in which he describes how “animalcules called eels”had appeared, as if from nowhere, in a sealed tube of water and paste.Theeels were nematodes, and the idea that they could spontaneously generatefrom inanimate matter was as old as Aristotle.That same theory drivesFrankenstein to seek the secret of life where you’d least expect to find it: thecharnel houses and graveyards of Ingolstadt. Paradoxically, the dead pulsatewith life-force.There “life changes to death and death to life” and “the worminherits the wonder of the eye.” The womb and the grave are,in Frankenstein, very close.The Temple of Nature is also, perhaps, the origin of Frankenstein’s momentof supreme sensory intensity: when the Monster first opens his eyes.“Erewhile the landed Stranger bursts his way, / From the warm waveemerging into day;/ Feels the chill blast, and piercing light, and tries /His tender lungs, and rolls his dazzled eyes” – thus Darwin on childbirth.56222 NT - Frankenstein TEXT.indd 1825/10/2013 11:24

Top: Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) by Joseph Wright of Derby The Gallery Collection/CorbisAbove: Luigi Galvani (1737-1789), Itali

Mary Shelley and Frankenstein Richard Holmes Mary Shelley was still Mary Godwin, and only 18 years old, when she began the short, untitled horror story that eventually became one of the most infl uential novels of the 19th century: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. It was June 1816, and she was holidaying on the Lake of

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