Hideous Progeny

According to Percy Bysshe Shelley, here’s how his wife, Mary, came to write Frankenstein: It was the cold and wet summer of 1816, and the couple was staying with Lord Byron in Switzerland. To pass the time, they decided each of them would write a scary story. But when the weather cleared, the boys lost interest and went off to explore the Alps. Mary stayed behind and invented the modern horror novel.

This famous anecdote serves as the basis for Dendinger’s entertaining new play, which began as her U. of C. master’s thesis. A seamless blend of fact and fantasy, Progeny accomplishes for the Romantics what Tom Stoppard did for Elizabethans in Shakespeare in Love but with more subtlety and fewer in-jokes for English majors. Over the course of four eventful days at Byron’s ostensibly quiet mountain retreat, Mary—with one baby on her hip and another on the way (a historical inaccuracy, but never mind)—spars with her dashing, dyspeptic host, discovers her idealistic mate has an unfeeling streak, and comes up with her story about the mad scientist and his love-starved monster. Dendinger’s principal subject is how writers transmute the messy raw materials of life into art; as the real-life Mary said, “Invention does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.”

The decision to use American accents seems a mistake, but director Hutchinson once again proves herself adept at orchestrating both lively ensemble work and quietly devastating moments between men and women in relationships. Can she please direct Chekhov next?

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