I am still in awe from watching the Joffrey Ballet's Frankenstein at the Lyric Opera House. Choreographer Liam Scarlett stayed closer to Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus than many of the films that I have seen including the James Whale 1931 film with Boris Karloff as the Creature. This ballet tells the story of a man driven by grief with the death of his mother to try and create a life by reanimating dead human flesh. Frankenstein is a visually stunning ballet that returns to the anarchic and erotic themes of the British Romantic period. The music by Lowel Lieberman has an ominous and suspenseful feel. Chicago Philharmonic Maestro Scott Speck led members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra with perfection and precision.
Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus was written in a golden age of literature with writers such as Byron, Keats, Blake, and Percy Shelley who were a part of the Romantic Movement in Great Britain. It was also a time when radical ideas from William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft were becoming prominent. Their daughter Mary Shelley was influenced by her parents and the advances in science. Shelley wrote Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus as part of a storytelling challenge and also in response to her grief from several miscarriages. Choreographer Scarlett has captured that visceral grief from losing a being that lived inside a woman's body and took nourishment from that body and poured it into his Creature.
Jonathan Dole is stunning as the Creature. His movements are animalistic and graceful as he moves between all fours with the distorted yet beautifully graceful moves of a newly animated and sentient being. Dole's facial expressions are beautiful as the Creature is horrified at seeing himself and then reading Victor Frankenstein's journal. He projects an atavistic rage and jealousy that elicits empathy. José Pablo Castro Cuevas is an astonishing Victor Frankenstein, who goes mad from guilt for unleashing the Creature into the world. His dance moves are effortless, especially when he is partnered with Amanda Assucena as Elizabeth. Their dance is a courtship that is infused with sensuality and eroticism.
This ballet is a departure from the traditional chaste love and physical contact. Assucena and Castro-Cuevas dance with a carnal flow, which is a hallmark of Joffrey's co-founder Gerald Arpino. The Arpino Chicago Centennial Celebration was performed in September of 2023 by companies from all across America. Scarlett has taken that use of the body to another level with this story about the human body.
The costume and scenic design are by John MacFarlane and it is fitting that it be done at the Lyric Opera House, which is known for elaborate sets and costumes. Frankenstein is a dance opera with a story arc. The choreography is dramatic and encompasses the entire stage even if only a small part is used. Dole appears as if nude and scarred as the Creature. His costume is illustrated with anatomy drawings of muscles and veins. The stitches that hold the body together are blood red giving the illusion that the cuts are raised and wet.
The costumes are elaborate and are visually tactile. Victor's mother Caroline Beaufort (Anais Bueno) is dressed in an elaborate maternity gown. The fact that pregnancy is acknowledged in Shelley's novel is a part of the anarchic philosophy of her father. The housekeeper Madame Moritz (Christina Rocas) is clad in a black gown with a ruched bodice. The skirts flow with movement. Victor's friend Henry (Xavier Xavier Nuñez) and all of the men in the cast are resplendent in velvet cutaways. Nuñez is wonderful as the first friend that Victor made in med school and who became his confidant even when Victor was going mad and wracked with guilt.
The backdrops by MacFarlane are ominous in a gray palette lit by saturated colors. The ballroom scene at Victor and Elizabeth's wedding is masterfully staged. The couples are dancing a waltz with the ladies being hoisted up and swung about. The Creature weaves in and out of the dancers taunting Victor and making the guests think he is hallucinating. That dance scene elicited bravos and applause with its intricacy and beauty.
The projections are designed by Finn Ross to show the progression of the Creature from a cadaver to a being, having an overlay of roped muscle on the skull. The projection faces the audience in the final act on the curtain before it goes up. Everything works together beautifully to make Frankenstein a unique production in the world of dance. I highly recommend that you go and see this. It is a paean to the beauty and horror resulting from human interference with nature rather than living in harmony and in awe. The Joffrey Ballet does justice to the choreography, acting, and Mary Shelley's story. It runs for three hours with two intermissions.
Frankenstein plays through October 22, at the Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive. Tickets start at $36. Please visit www.joffrey.org for more information about the cast, music, and the Joffrey interpretation of Frankenstein.
For more information on this and other plays, see theatreinchicago.com.
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