Frankenstein

Because of their commitment to risky, provocative work, both Graney’s Hypocrites and the MCA’s performance series are essential to Chicago theater. In this case, however, their luck seems to have abandoned them: Frankenstein is almost unwatchable. Graney has jettisoned large swaths of Mary Shelley’s plot, keeping only such core ideas as the reanimation of a creature who wants a wife and a lonely trip through the Arctic. In its place, we get Graneyana. The piece seems cobbled together less from the cultural reverberations of the Frankenstein story than from past Hypocrites productions.

There’s the fascination with strange drinks; Frankenstein’s fiancée, Elizabeth (Stoltz), mixes so many elixirs one might think this was Jekyll and Hyde. There’s the punctuation of rock-song arias, interchangeable with those in last spring’s Oedipus. There’s jokey anachronism; there’s bloody doll parts. And there is, of course, the promenade staging, though in contrast with such previous triumphs as Oedipus and 4.48 Psychosis, views here are often obstructed and action hard to follow.

The monster (Kahler) denounces his creator (Byrnes) in stilted 18th-century speeches. Victor, in turn, worries over the human tendency to trespass boundaries in equally leaden prose. Beyond the philosophizing, it’s much less clear in this version why either behaves as he does. Meanwhile, the dichotomy between Elizabeth’s suicidal virginity and the bra-and-panty-clad prostitution of the Strange Girl (Fisher) has a, shall we say, retrograde feel. James Whale’s 1931 film version plays on projection throughout; until the monster starts futzing with it toward the end, the film provides a welcome escape from the dismal onstage proceedings.

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