Forget if Frankenstein was the scientist or the monster - it's all about Elizabeth

Rebecca S'manga Frank as Elizabeth in Frankenstein, Shakespeare Theatre Company.
Photo: DJ Corey Photography

Emily Burns is familiar to theater-goers lucky enough to experience last spring's Macbeth, starring Ralph Fiennes. After adapting Shakespeare's text for that production, the London-based playwright has updated Mary Shelley's Gothic novel for her own direction at Shakespeare Theatre Company, seen Saturday evening at the Klein Theatre. Adaptations of Frankenstein abound, as recently as last year's uneven film version, Poor Things. Burns has also pursued a feminist reading of the work, not by feminizing the monster but by viewing the entire story through the character of Elizabeth, given "the agency of a contemporary woman," as the program note put it.

If it's been a while since you read the novel, Elizabeth is the girl adopted by Victor Frankenstein's parents. Mary Shelley made changes to the character as she revised the book: in the original version, Elizabeth and Victor were cousins, but in later versions she was an unrelated foster daughter. In both cases she is betrothed to her step-brother, but their wedding night turns bloody when the monster that Victor brought into the world, in a fit of jealousy, murders Elizabeth. (The character, who never knows her biological mother, has much in common with Mary Shelley herself, raised by a stepmother not as kindly disposed to her at all.)

(Spoilers ahead) Burns centers the action in the Frankenstein family home, near the end of the novel. Victor Frankenstein has returned from his studies in Ingolstadt, but he is not being at all truthful about what happened there or why his father had to nurse him back to health. Disaster strikes when Victor's younger brother, whom Elizabeth raised almost like a child, is murderered, and the family maid, Justine, is arrested and executed for the crime. Burns alters the ending significantly: rather than the monster murdering Elizabeth, there is a somewhat nonsensical story about her and Victor's child, left to an orphanage and somehow raised by the monster.

Rebecca S'manga Frank made a striking STC debut as Elizabeth, a 19th-century waif transformed by a modern sense of independence and frankness. As the downtrodden Justine, Anna Takayo made an equally worthy debut, bringing a remarkable range of emotion to the role, from outrage to tragic resolve. As a fast-talking Victor with a malleable sense of the truth, Nick Westrate never quite convinced, although Burns's adaptation was perhaps more to blame for making him a far less sympathetic character. With his entrance delayed to the final scenes, Lucas Iverson had even less of a chance to make an impression as the Monster, frightening only in a few flashbacks and voice-overs.

The decidedly 21st-century idiom of Burns's language in the adaptation is off-putting, given the 19th-century setting established by the shadow-filled Gothic set (scenic design by Andrew Boyce, lighting by Neil Austin) and romantic-period costumes (Kate Voyce). Music and sound, designed and composed by André Pluess, are responsible for most of the chills, such as they are. The most faithful parts of the novel to be reproduced are the voice-overs, mostly taken verbatim from Shelley's text.

Frankenstein has been extended through June 29. shakespearetheatre.org.