Guthrie, ‘Frankenstein’: Present at the Creation

Never mind about having fun--time flies. For example, it was 25 years ago this week that the Guthrie Theatre opened in Minneapolis.

What brings this to mind is the Guthrie’s production of “Frankenstein,” coming to the Doolittle on Tuesday. The company doesn’t seem to be making a big deal of the anniversary, but then most of them probably weren’t at the wedding.

I was. The play was “Hamlet.” Four hours of it. Tyrone Guthrie was determined not to condescend to the Upper Midwest. But about 10 minutes into the performance, Guthrie realized that he should have opened with a bullfight. The audience was too keyed-up for a mere play.

Even the critics were uptight. I reviewed the show, but I’m not sure I experienced it. “The Miser” with Hume Cronyn proved a lot more accessible. Then came Guthrie’s beautifully considered production of “Three Sisters.” Even Robert Brustein liked that one. World-class theater had come to the Twin Cities, if it could keep it.

Guthrie returned the next season to do “Henry V” and a wonderfully nasty “Volpone,” and he would return again for guest productions, most memorably “The House of Atreus.” But Tony Guthrie’s mission was to start theaters, not to run them. It was up to the community to keep the Guthrie Theatre rolling and it has done so, up hill, down dale.

The theater’s history since Guthrie left (he died in ‘71) shows many changes of administration, with no basic interruptions in service. Under its next-to-last director, Liviu Ciulei, some radical experiments were made in the use of the theater’s stage. Where Guthrie had seen it as a platform for the actor, it now became a kind of operating room for the director.

Still, the Guthrie’s basic objectives haven’t changed that much: to support an acting company of a certain size; to do serious and intelligent plays, usually from the classical repertory.

Another mandate is to tour. On its last Southern California visit, the Guthrie brought us a “Great Expectations,” adapted by Barbara Field, that wouldn’t have shamed the Royal Shakespeare Company.

And now--speaking of surgery--”Frankenstein.”

Not as in Boris Karloff. That’s what I was anticipating when I saw the show the other night at UC San Diego: a stage version of the RKO movie. This was the line that the Broadway version of “Dracula” had taken, with surprisingly startling results. Get them laughing, and then grab them by the throat.

The Guthrie’s “Frankenstein” doesn’t try for laughs or chills. It is aimed at the head. Field’s script--the full title is “Frankenstein: Playing With Fire”--returns to Mary Shelley’s original 1818 novel, not in order to give a literal account of it, but to offer a “response” to it.

The reader who makes the same return will find that Mrs. Shelley was telling a rather different story than Mr. Karloff. In the “Frankenstein” movies, we can fault Dr. Frankenstein for going too far with his experiments, but we do think of him as a qualified scientist.

Mrs. Shelley’s hero is more of a dilettante. He works out of his back room, like an abortionist, and he works in fits and starts. Rather than a man of method, he’s a man of mood. To quote Mrs. Shelley’s husband: “I fall upon the thorns of life; I bleed.”

The monster in the movies must force his escape. The monster in the book simply slips out the door. His young creator is so aghast at his handiwork that he has retired to the next room, perhaps hoping that it was all a nightmare. When he returns to find the room empty, he’s relieved--maybe it was all a nightmare.

Mrs. Shelley’s tale is as concerned with the mechanism of denial as it is with the issues of the overweening scientist. The denial could go so far as this: Frankenstein’s monster may be Frankenstein himself. Certainly it’s curious how the “monster” always knows where to find him--even in the Arctic--when they need to talk.

Other commentators see the story as a metaphor for the dark side of the birth process, with which young Mrs. Shelley had grown prematurely familiar. Whatever the interpretation, it’s an exceptionally fecund myth. One could scoop two or three plays from it.

The Guthrie’s “Frankenstein” is less a play than a dramatic oratorio. Even the moments of action have a solemn, ritualistic sense to them--the creation of the monster, the strangling of Frankenstein’s wife.

The most common action is talk. Field sees the crux of the play as a confrontation between the creature and his creator, with the latter on the defensive.

As in the novel, the subtext suggests an interview between a righteous child and a guilty parent. How could you have me, and then walk out on me? Why do you make me feel so gross? Why can’t you love me? Why can’t you help me?

A child wouldn’t demand that his parent make him a playmate, as the monster does. But the plea for justice is the same, and we can understand the monster’s rage when Frankenstein goes back on his bargain--not on principle, but as usual, on impulse.

On the other hand, Frankenstein does have a point: If he gives the monster a mate, they’ll start to breed. When the characters in this “Frankenstein” are truly at issue, the evening takes on a cold fire.

Unfortunately, and rather perversely, many scenes go to the mere recounting of information. The outer frame of the play is the final meeting of the monster (Peter Syvertsen) and his maker (Stephen Pelinski) in the ice fields. Not having encountered each other for years, they have a lot of catching up to do, and they spent the bulk of the play doing so.

Even when they are helping two earlier versions of themselves play out a scene (Curzon Dobell as the young Frankenstein, John Carroll Lynch as the new monster), the effect is fairly static. Presumably we should feel some tension as to what will happen when creator and monster finally square off, and perhaps we will feel this at the Doolittle Theater. But at UC San Diego, it was simply a series of well-wrought exchanges.

I stress the “well-wrought.” One thing that would have pleased Tyrone Guthrie about this production is the quality of the speech. He wanted actors who knew where the breath came. Michael Maggio’s players filled UCSD’s huge Mandeville Auditorium with beautiful, natural sound and they should be even more of a pleasure to listen to at the Doolittle.

John Arnone’s setting should also show to greater advantage there: For instance, the winter moon will be able to come up all the way over the horizon. Arnone’s white-on-white setting is just present enough to set the imagination going, and just absent enough to give it something to do.

Insofar as the actors are allowed to act, as distinguished from speaking, they act well. Syvertsen is particularly sympathetic as the older monster, regretting his fallen nature, but not forswearing it. Guthrie could have used him in “The Tempest” as Caliban. “You taught me language, and my profit is, I know how to curse.”

‘Frankenstein: Playing With Fire’

Barbara Field’s play, adapted from the novel by Mary Shelley. Director Michael Maggio. Set John Arnone. Costumes Jack Edwards. Lighting Marcus Dilliard. Sound John Calder. Dramaturg Michael Lupu. Stage manager Russell Johnson. Assistant stage manager Peter S. Del Vecho. Casting director Jason La Padura. Casting consultants Doug Finlayson, Dennis McCullough. With Stephen Pelinski, Peter Syvertsen, Curzon Dobell, John Carroll Lynch, Olive Birkelund, Michael Tezla.

Plays at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, at 7:30 p.m. Sundays, with 2 p.m. matinees Wednesdays and Sundays, Doolittle Theater. Closes May 15. Tickets $6-$12. (213) 206-8744.