MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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Frankenstein, Southwark Playhouse London
Ingenious updating of Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece is a technological triumph
Excellent: Ella Dacres and Sarah Lusack
[Helen-Murray]
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
THE National Youth Theatre’s Frankenstein opens with Sonny Poon Tip’s Garth standing on stage and telling the audience that, “like fax machines,” virtual reality will soon make actual theatres obsolete.
It’s a gutsy claim but then everything about this production is robust, from the performances of the National Youth Theatre’s young actors to the radical edit of Mary Shelley’s two-centuries-old novel.
Technology is at the heart of Carl Miller’s adaptation, in which Frankenstein’s monster (Sarah Lusack) is AI and, in an excellent sequence, the audience experience the action through VR headsets.
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