Not calling this a review mainly because I didn’t see the whole of the National Youth Theatre’s new production of
Frankenstein; I also won’t be reviewing the cast, as they weren’t really responsible for me taking against the show so strongly. If you
are in the cast reading this, don’t worry, Judi Dench couldn’t salvage
Madame de Sade, why should you be expected to salvage this? Carl Miller’s new version of Mary Shelley’s classic story has the high concept of moving the action to the present day; instead of more general 19th century fears about where science could take us we have the very specific 21st century fear of where Artificial Intelligence is heading, and whether it could end up usurping us. So the monster becomes a robot with AI, whose creator ramps up its ability to understand and feel emotions to the point that it achieves a level of consciousness identical to a human’s; cue an existential crisis in the form of a murderous rampage.
