Mary Shelley’s Monsters: JC Payne, Katrina Clark, and Jon Beal – Photo: Teresa Castracane
Some scary stories are best told in the dark. That’s one lingering conclusion after seeing a midday matinee of Bob Bartlett‘s gothic horror play Mary Shelley’s Monsters, a moody, meta deconstruction of the author’s trailblazing novel Frankenstein, examining its text, the god complex of its namesake scientist, and, of course, the Monster he creates.
Directed by Alex Levy, the play is performed inside the historic chapel of centuries-old Congressional Cemetery, seemingly an ideal venue for a creepy vision of gods and monsters on a stormy night.
Congressional Cemetery as a venue contributed mightily to the foreboding atmosphere of Bartlett’s allegorical werewolf thriller Lýkos Ánthrōpos, also directed by Levy and performed last year outside among the crypts and tombstones.
That play I saw at night seated next to a grave in the otherwise deserted cemetery. The day of our Mary Shelley’s Monsters matinee, the cemetery was anything but deserted, modestly busy with Sunday strollers and dogs happily playing off-leash all over the grounds.
Even on a gray autumn afternoon, light shone into the chapel through stained glass windows above the pulpit and the peaked arch entryway — a lovely sight but not conducive to the play’s Gothic atmosphere.
Essentially, the house lights cannot be dimmed, which might matter less for a more conventionally structured work. But Bartlett’s adventurous mashup of Shelley’s text, his own lyrical lines, poetry by Mary’s husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and text from other sources, including Mary’s journal, demands focus and in some moments darkness to feel immersed in the fantasy.
Passages meant to be told by candlelight are flooded with ambient light from above. An amusing interlude using doll versions of the movie Bride and Monster as puppets is spoiled by the daylight. And on multiple occasions during this particular performance, barking dogs (and owners) outside spoiled the sound indoors. Suspension of disbelief battled hard and lost.
The cast, for the most part, maintains the mood of the play. Katrina Clark most adroitly manages multiple roles, including as Mary Shelley and her feminist author mother Mary Wollstonecraft, alternately narrating the tale, performing plays within the play, fiercely orating poetry, and throwing in the occasional wink to the audience.
Through Clark’s insistent portrayal, the play’s conception of Mary Shelley as a genteel Goth girl who’s the true mad scientist, comes into view. Mary is the sinner who overreaches to wonder if the dead can return to life, who is mad to think she could create life like God, or like any man.
The horror born of her sin comes into view via the Creature, portrayed by Jon Beal. A hulking figure in a cable-knit sweater, Beal’s Creature is more philosophical than frightening, although the actor does inject a matter-of-fact menace into certain gestures and moments.
In one such moment, the Creature gruesomely catalogs the different corpses whose respective parts were used to create him, a monster “pieced together from the leavings of other men.” In perhaps the play’s tensest scene, the Creature plays alone with the baby of Victor and Elizabeth Frankenstein, an infant represented by a quite eerie-looking doll.
Those small touches of stagecraft go a long way, but not far enough to smooth out the bumpy transitions between Bartlett’s horror, the fictionalized history, and beats from the book.
There’s also the bumpy performance of JC Payne as Victor Frankenstein, a stiff reading that doesn’t convey fear or lunacy, or the horror of overreaching ego, but reserve — not exactly a cogent quality for Victor Frankenstein. In the light of day, the mad doctor doesn’t bring this monster to life.
Mary Shelley’s Monsters (★★☆☆☆) runs through Oct. 12 inside the Chapel at Historic Congressional Cemetery, 1801 E St. SE. Tickets are $35. Visit www.bob-bartlett.com.
Everyone is entitled their own opinion, but is everyone entitled to their opinion of your opinion? Furthermore, is your opinion a reflection of who you are in a greater scope as a person?
Those questions lie at the heart of Art, a starry play on Broadway that has been revived since its initial 1998 run, for which it won a Tony. Back then, it starred Alan Alda, Victor Garber, and Alfred Molina. Now, Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale, and James Corden step into the work from French playwright Yasmina Reza, translated from its original language by Christopher Hampton.
Even in our era of short-form entertainment, the 100-minute comedy feels much too long. It evolves around a trio of three longtime friends who debate a $300,000 painting. As Porky Pig so succinctly stated, "That's all, folks!" Much like an artist and their sycophants who believe that a pretentious artpiece is masterful, theatergoers will also delude themselves into thinking that they have witnessed a show of great import. In fairness, they aren't totally wrong. Art does have more to offer than what it offers at first blush.
A revival in need of some reviving, Creative Cauldron's refresh of the company's 2015 The Turn of the Screw: The Musical puts an abundance of talent onstage with only lackluster returns to show for the effort.
The ambience for Matt Conner and Stephen Gregory Smith's adaptation of Henry James' 1898 Gothic horror novella feels appropriately spooky, but the performance energy seems to be moving in many disparate directions. (Smith wrote the lyrics and libretto and Conner, who directs, composed the score.)
Akin to an attic full of secrets, with boxes and shelves hidden beneath white sheets, Margie Jervis' ghostly-white set fills the stage of Creative Cauldron's voluminous new black box. And Lynn Joslin's expressive lighting does well to distinguish shades of darkness within the monotone milieu.
Estranged cousins Mina (Renea S. Brown) and Sade (Hillary Jones) in a.k. payne's intimate drama Furlough's Paradise could hardly be more different in taste and temperament, but they still share more in common than just blood.
Despite wildly differing living circumstances, both women risk hoping for their version of a better future. They both harbor dreams that feel so big they have to keep them closely guarded, and both are haunted by choices they made that led them down uncertain paths.
Mina and Sade once shared a childhood, a sisterhood and friendship, bonds that frayed as their lives arced in seemingly opposite directions. Mina, the bright Ivy League grad, now lives in L.A. on a plump Google salary. Sade, of whom far less was expected, resides in a cell inside a West Virginia state prison.
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