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.
It's rare for a play's themes to resonate with quite the impact and immediacy that Tracy Letts' incisive The Minutes did for me the other night. Keegan Theatre's boldly-staged production, directed by Susan Marie Rhea, landed a direct hit to my conscience, although the play got a hefty assist from coincidence.
Just hours before seeing this comedy about town leaders who reckon with their town's checkered past regarding Native Americans by rewriting history, I, by chance, visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
Several exhibits there -- including one that reduces the U.S. Indian Removal Act to a bold business decision that, "in creating wealth" for the nation and for Southern millionaires, "was a spectacular success" -- left the alarming impression that history is being whitewashed before our eyes in real time, let alone in the fiction of Letts' 2018 Pulitzer-finalist play.
Of all the kooky shenanigans a crew of queer friends could get into on a pizza night, conducting a blood ritual to summon a demon isn't the craziest thing we've heard.
And should that demon turn out to be Ronald Reagan incarnated as a fierce and fearsome drag queen -- as in Katherine Gwynn's new play Everything, Devoured, presented by Nu Sass Productions -- that just makes a certain kind of sense.
Natural and supernatural are blended nicely by directors Tracey Erbacher and Ileana Blustein, staging the world-premiere production in the intimate environs of the Sitar Arts Center. Even as the story spins out into comic-horror fantasia, a down-to-earth sensibility prevails inside the modest urban apartment shared by queer partners Kore (June Dickson-Burke) and Julian (Tristin Evans).
The second one-person show to grace The Shakespeare Theatre this season, Suzy Eddie Izzard's The Tragedy of Hamlet is quite a different beast from Bill Irwin's On Beckett. Right out of the gate, this has the feel of a celebrity offering, where the cult of Izzard is so integral to the concept -- and indeed the performance -- it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because, frankly, there has to be a pretty good reason to watch someone do all the parts in a play, especially something as inherently crowded and complex as Shakespeare. Izzard, with her versatile, high-profile career (encompassing standup, theater, television, and film) has developed just that kind of persona along with the ambition to master this particular skillset (she previously performed Dickens' Great Expectations).
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.