The real-life tale behind the creation of Frankenstein is almost as well known as the story itself: Mary Shelley dreamed it up at the age of 18, winning a wager with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was published two years later, in 1818.
Rona Munro incorporates this story within her adaptation by featuring the character of Shelley on stage, in parallel to the fiction. Eilidh Loan as the author is a fierce, sometimes impish voice, scribbling manically at her writing desk and warning us to brace ourselves for the horror to come. Jagged lighting and the sound of smashing ice create an edgy atmosphere.
There’s an urgent, nervous intensity in Shelley’s storytelling, which establishes a melodramatic tone, but it feels overegged. She and the rest of the cast shout lines to signal fear in lieu of more potent terror, and the overall effect verges on shrill.
The meta-theatrical device of Shelley’s presence doesn’t add enough to the drama either. “Is it frightening enough?” she asks. More gratingly she proclaims, “There’s a storm coming” as lightning strikes and, “Now that’s a proper deathbed scene. You’re welcome.”
Perhaps because of her asides and interventions, the characters never feel real. Victor Frankenstein (Ben Castle-Gibb) is a frenetic character expressing extremes of emotion while his bare-chested monster (Michael Moreland) conveys greater depths but is still not touching enough. The scene in which he develops a tender connection with a blind man feels rushed.
Frankenstein is a ghost story that doubles as a morality tale about unfettered science, but, while Munro’s script ponders questions of moral responsibility, it does not engage deeply enough.
Shelley dreamed her story before she wrote it and a vivid, not-quite-real quality is suggested by Becky Minto’s imaginative, glacially white set, with its bare tree branches set against balconies and windows through which the monster surveils his prey. But the promise of this atmospheric setting is not realised by the action.
• At the Belgrade, Coventry, until 12 October.
