Mary Shelley's Monster

Roxy Art House, Edinburgh
22-26 November 2005

Lazzi experimental arts unit, in collaboration with Theatre Lucida, presents a provocative and poetic new work based on the life and writings of Mary Shelley.

Having in their last production explored the troubled soul and bizarre legacy of the Polish artist Witkacy, Lazzi now turn their attention to the mysterious imaginative workings of the mind of Mary Shelley.

Mary Shelley walked in a world of ghosts: her drowned husband the poet Percy Shelley, three of her four children, and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died a few days after giving birth to her. Mary herself gives birth to a strange and troubled creature in Frankenstein, and she is author too of the less known yet marvellously eery and prophetic The Last Man, a novel set in the 21^st century when a pestilence is spreading across the globe threatening the extinction of mankind, a chillingly real scenario for us today.

The performance piece brings Mary to visit us in the 21^st century in a ghostly and surreal resurrection: we meet Mary with all of her demons, the creator and the creature as one. She is a phantom haunting the shadowy stage of the present.

Staged with Lazzi’s trademark raw simplicity, intense yet controlled physicality, and courageous exploration of the abstract, this production will reveal a Mary Shelley we have not met before.

In this devised collaboration Lazzi artistic director David W W Johnstone writes and directs Corinne Harris of Theatre Lucida as Mary Shelley.

22 – 26 November 2005, 8 pm (60 mins), £7/£5
Roxy Art House, 2 Roxburgh Place , Edinburgh
Box Office 0871 750 0077

 Further information:
David W W Johnstone, Lazzi – Artistic Director 
dwwj@lazzi.co.uk

The Edinburghguide.com review:

Terrifying and seductive. On the stage is a silent, still kneeling figure. Wrapped in a black sheet she looks young, almost ethereal. After a long moment she breathes in, then slowly, as if movement has been forgotten to her, she stirs. Her movements are stiff, almost machinelike, as if her limbs were not wholly hers to command.

She is Mary Shelley and all her creations - Frankenstein, his monster and the Last Man on Earth from her chilling and possibly prophetic novel, The Last Man. She comes alive again in this century, her former life and losses are still known and experienced by her, they mix and mingle with her imaginative characters.

Moving betwixt and between is actor Corinne Harris. She deploys considerable skill in her physical movement and vocal range. This devised production is intense, meticulously directed by David W. W. Johnstone from the text he wrote. Just occasionally words are lost but such is the compulsion to watch and be enthralled by the actor it almost doesn't matter.

Staged on an near bare stage with a single light that shines diagonally across the stage, the use of shadows small and huge and the movement along, across and above the stage add to the feeling that here indeed is a being beyond death. A being both terrifying and seductive.

© Thelma Good 23 November 2005 - Published on EdinburghGuide.com