Frankenstein in Beijing
(After Mary Shelley)
Inside out Theatre, Beijing
Performed in Mandarin
Intelligent, unsettling and ebullient.
The TIMES
Daniel Goldman’s high-spirited production…. has a certain oddball charm.
The Guardian
Unapologetically rough theatre — starkly staged, inclusive, anti-authoritarian.
Evening Standard
Tangram deliver the play with a massive charge of enthusiasm and inventiveness.
Playstosee
The Dragon is simultaneously a light-hearted rendition of a fairy tale and a very serious political satire that fully justifies a trip down to the Elephant and Castle.
British Theatre Guide
If the overall parable is clear enough, its enactment is still startling, and drag on the performance certainly does not.
Reviewsgate
Victor Frankenstein has been brought in by the police for the murder of his wife. Over the course of an all night interrogation, he protests his innocence and confesses to the two detectives his true crime: a scientific discovery that has allowed him to bring a creature made up of dead body parts to life, and his abandonment of that creature with horrific consequences for him and his family. As the interrogation draws on, it becomes clear that the nightmare isn’t yet over and that the creature is still coming for revenge.
Cast
Zhai Tianlin (Victor Frankenstein), Wu Haochen (Creature),
Creative Team
Daniel Goldman (Director), Jemima Robinson (Set & Costume designer), Richard Williamson (LX and Video Design), Dave Carey (Sound designer), Xinxi Du (Assistant Director)
I was invited to write and direct a new version of Frankenstein by Inside Out Theatre as a response to a Chinese scientist claiming to have created the first human clones. Frankenstein was the first piece of theatre that really got to me. I was probably only six or seven and it was a production at Polka Theatre that I’d gone to see, but I’ll never forget the nightmares I had that night, and the excitement of falling hook line and sinker for an imaginary world.
The inspiration then for my own version was to create a production that might embrace the darkness of the original and seek to scare a modern (adult) audience. My starting point for my adaptation was a tiny little scene in Mary Shelley’s original novel where Victor Frankenstein confesses to a Chief Justice what he’s done after the death of his wife at the hands of the creature… and he isn’t believed. In my version this became a modern day Victor being interrogated by two detectives for the murder of his wife, and over the course of the interrogation, confessing what he’d done to the creature.
Another experience abroad, and another completely different world and way of making theatre. Some of the actors loved the freedom I gave them. Some of them hated it. Add to that, a significant language barrier, and it made for an endlessly exciting process. Thank god for my amazing team, especially assistant director Xinxi, who proved an invaluable translator and director of children, and who took over the show when it went on tour the following year.
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