" Thanks to Rob Crouch and Philip Graham's pared-down production.. .the cast of four conjure eight foot mutants, grisly murder and arctic pursuit using only gnarling limbs and the rudest of props.. .the three concentric tales are intercut fluidly and dynamically and it replays the ghoulish standard with admirable lucidity"

Time Out

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, adapted & directed by Philip Graham & Rob Crouch

Designed by Julie Watson. Wimbledon Studio Theatre and touring, Spring 1999.

"Retains the novels multiple narrative forms, and captures much of Shelley's compressed urgency and narrative intensity...The cast, helped by some inventive and resourcefully choreographed direction from Graham and Crouch... conjure up grisly laboratories, mist shrouded decks and any number of incidental characters with minimal interruption, a spare economy of characterisation and a breakneck, though always fluent delivery."

The Times

Devising a text based on Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece was an enormous challenge. The action of the novel covers much of Europe and a large cast of characters, not least of which, and perhaps hardest to represent, the brooding presence of the monstrous creation himself.Equally difficult to deal with is the colossal body of work that has been produced in response to this work. The films, the criticism and the theory.The show was four actors, one playing Frankenstein and the three others taking numerous incidental characters and all combining to play the monster. Mixed in was a collection of contemporary scientific and medical writings and the many layered narrative of Shelley's tale was spun out of the original circumstances of the story writing competition that was its creation.

Mary Shelley and her husband Percy, Lord Byron and their friend all tried to invent ghost stories to pass the time as they holidayed in Switzerland and a dream that Mary had formed the basis for the only one of the tales that has endured.

The production toured to the Central Studio, Basingstoke (17 Mar), Brewery Arts, Cirencester (18 Mar), Tamworth Assembley Rooms (24 Mar), Miskin Theatre, Dartford (28-29 Apr), Maltings Art Centre, St Albans (6 May).

It also ran at the Wimbledon Studio Theatre, London 6-24 April.