More Than a Little Bit Crazy
Frankenstein, The Man Who Become God
By Alden Nowlan, Walter Learning & Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
12 Jun, 2022
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
1975’s Frankenstein, The Man Who Become God was CBC Stage’s staging of Alden Nowlan and Walter Learning’s full-length adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is a restaging of Theatre New Brunswick’s production of the Nowlan/Learning adaptation. Lead actors were David Brown as the Creature, Neil Munro as Baron Frankenstein, Joan Gregson as Frankenstein’s doting fiancée Elizabeth Lavenza, David Renton as Henry Clerval (Frankenstein and Elizabeth’s friend).
Determined to make 1840 the year man conquers the North Pole, Captain Robert Walton refuses to allow minor setbacks like being locked in ice or the alarm of his increasingly mutinous crew deter him. The giant whose dog-drawn sled races by the trapped ship? Curious but surely of no relevance to Walton.
Three-quarters dead Baron Victor Frankenstein, on the other hand, is a man with whom Walton shares an important quality: hubris. Whereas Walton thus far is only risking his crew’s life, Frankenstein has left a trail of bodies behind him.