|
Music by: Mark Baron
Book & Lyrics by: Jeffrey Jackson
Directed by: Bill Fennelly
Original Story Adaptation by: Gary P. Cohen
Based on the Novel ‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’ by Mary Shelley
Previews from October 10th 2007
November 1st 2007 - December 9th 2007
37 Arts Theater
Off-Broadway
SYNOPSIS
In this stage adaptation of "Frankenstein," authors Jeffrey Jackson and Mark Baron sought to create a work that was extraordinarily faithful to Mary Shelley's original novel while offering a bold, new experience for modern theater audiences. To do so, they have broken with many of the conventions of musical theater to re-imagine the classic allegory as a "memory play" in which time and space are fluid, and in which people and places come instantly alive in the mind of the story's protagonist, Victor Frankenstein--and vanish just as quickly. The result is a thrilling "mindscape" that brings the timeless myth of Frankenstein to life as never before.
|
OPENING NIGHT CAST
|
|
Hunter Foster
|
Victor Frankenstein
|
|
Steve Blanchard
|
A condemed man/The "Creature"
|
|
Christiane Noll
|
Elizabeth Lavenza
|
|
Jim Stanek
|
Henry Clerval
|
|
Mandy Bruno
|
Justine Moritz, William's governess
|
|
Becky Barta
|
Caroline Frankenstein, Victor's mother
|
|
Casey Erin Clark
|
Agatha, The blind man's daughter
|
|
Struan Erlenborn
|
William Frankenstein, Victor's young brother
|
|
Eric Michael Gillett
|
Alphonse Frankenstein, Victor's father
|
|
Aaron Serotsky
|
Captain Robert Walton/The Blind Man
|
ENSEMBLE
Nick Cartell, Casey Erin Clark, Leslie Henstock, Patrick Mellon, Aaron Serotsky
UNDERSTUDIES
Henry, Victor, University Official - Nick Cartell
Elzabeth, Mother - Casey Erin Clark
Agatha, William, Young Victor, Justine - Leslie Henstock
Walton, Blind Man, Magistrate - Patrick Mellon
The "Creature", Alphonse - Aaron Serotsky
Victor Frankenstein - Jim Stanek
DETAILED SYNOPSIS
1793. North of the Arctic Circle, a sailing vessel comes upon a man adrift on a floe of ice, "a wretch... near death." He is Victor Frankenstein, and he proceeds to tell the ship's captain the horrifying tale of his twisted life...
Victor is the scion of a prominent family of Geneva, Switzerland, where he enjoyed a childhood of wealth, privilege and indulgence. As a young boy, he exhibits a brilliant mind and a gift for the natural sciences, and is his parents' greatest joy and pride. Their family soon swells to include Elizabeth -- an abandoned waif whom Victor's parents take in as their ward -- and later William, Victor's much-younger brother. Victor's brother in spirit is Henry Clerval, his boyhood friend, and he, Victor, and Elizabeth forge deep bonds of friendship from their earliest days.
Victor's thirst for knowledge leads him on a quest to master the secrets of life and death. A tragic event galvanizes his sense of mission: His beloved mother perishes of scarlet fever -- but not before uttering her fondest wish: that Victor and Elizabeth one day be married.
Victor ventures off to the University at Ingolstadt, Germany -- the finest school of the sciences in Europe -- vowing to return to Elizabeth to fulfill the promise of a life together.
At the University, Victor's ideas for unlocking the mysteries of life are met with scorn and ridicule, but he vows to continue his quest in secrecy. In the public hanging of a criminal he finds the primary vessel of his grand experiment. He claims the body of the condemned man, and his work is begun.
For many months, he toils in a clandestine laboratory to create what he hopes will be the perfect human -- a giant, fashioned from the finest limbs and organs Victor could purloin from the gallows and graveyards. Then, one November night, he harnesses the awesome force of an electrical storm to breath life into his "creation."
But when his creature comes to life, it is not as the perfect human he envisioned, but as a hideous beast.
Thus begins the timeless, cautionary tale of Victor Frankenstein, whose noble dreams of grandeur unleash instead a litany of terror and tragedy. Before it is done, everything in his privileged world will be torn asunder, as Victor and his Creature are pit against one another in an epic and deadly war of wills that will lead them across the continent and ultimately to the barren ends of the world.
A story of life, love, Promethean dreams, and Faustian horror, Frankenstein explores the full gamut of human experience like no other tale ever written. Forget all you have seen in the movies -- this is not Hollywood's nightmare of lumbering ghouls and wild-eyed maniacs.
This is Mary Shelley's original, brilliant, romantic terror -- a dark vision of what lies at the depths of the human soul and what happens when it is unleashed.
(Taken From The Official Frankenstein Website)
|
SONG LIST
|
|
ACT 1
|
ACT 2
|
Prelude
(Capt. Wallace, Victor & Company)
|
A Happier Day
(Company)
|
A Golden Age
(Company)
|
The Modern Prometheus
(Victor, Henry, Creature)
|
Amen
(Condemed Man, Victor & Company)
|
The Hands of Time - Reprise
(Elizabeth & Victor)
|
Birth to My Creation
(Victor)
|
The Workings of the Heart
(Elizabeth, Victor & Company)
|
Dear Victor
(Elizabeth & Victor)
|
An Angel's Embrace
(Creature)
|
The Hands of Time
(Elizabeth, Henry, Justine, William)
|
The Workings of the Heart - Reprise
(Victor)
|
Your Father's Eyes
(Alphonse)
|
Your Father's Eyes - Reprise
(Alphonse)
|
The Creature's Tale
(Creature)
|
These Hands
(Creature)
|
The Waking Nightmare
(Creature)
|
The Chase
(Victor & Company)
|
The Music of Love
(Blind Man, Agatha, Creature)
|
The Coming of the Dawn
(Victor)
|
Why?
(William, Justine, Creature, Victor & Company)
|
Amen - Reprise
(Creature & Victor)
|
The Proposition
(Victor, Creature & Company)
|
|
|
