Essay On The Difference Between Frankenstein Play And Movie

After attending the Dallas Theater Center's production of Frankenstein

written by Nick Dear, I noticed many differences between the production and the novel it was based on. The biggest, and easily the most noticeable difference between the play and the novel for me was that there was no backstory in the play. The production began with the creation of the creature. There was no story of how Victor grew up, and nothing about how he became so educated. Though I am not criticizing the production for its lack of context, because I understand that if they added these scenes the already two-hour production would have easily become a four to five hour one. This may have also been the reason that the character in the novel, Robert Walton, was nowhere to be found in during the

production. In fact, the play was almost as if we were watching the scenes that Victor shared with Walton in the novel in real time as they were occurring.

As I said before, the play began with the creation of the creature, so there were no letters from Walton, and no exploration to the north pole. Since Walton was not a part of the play, Victor and the creature never actually died. In the last scene of the play, Victor was struggling to follow the creature through the snow and ice and he eventually became unconscious, everyone in the audience thought he died. The creature was holding Victor in his arms telling him that all he wanted was for Victor to love him. Then all of a sudden, almost like the creature brought Victor back to life, Victor responded, and the creature got up and started on the journey once more with hopes that Victor would follow. Another difference that I noticed was the creature's interactions with De Lacey. The creature approached De Lacey right when he found the house in the woods before he could speak at all. De Lacey acted as a mentor for the creature, De Lacey taught him how to speak, how to read, and how to write. The creature first words were, "Piss off! Bugger off!", he was repeating what two men yelled at him. We found out later on in the play that the

creature and De Lacey's relationship had been going on for a whole year. This is completely different from the novel where the creature actually learned how to talk and read prior to his encounter with De Lacey which in the book was only for a few minutes before Felix walked in and attacked the creature. When Felix saw the creature in the play, De Lacey tried to stop him, but it didn't stop him from attacking the creature. This prompted the creature to kill all three family members with an ax I believe and then he continued to burn the house down. The appearance of the creature in the play was not too different from the one described in the novel. Both had long black hair, yellow skin, black lips, and scars. One difference was that the creature in the play didn't seem to be tremendously muscular, nevertheless he did show that he was abnormally strong in multiple scenes. When the creature meets William, he asked to be brought to him, the creature then takes William off to be killed. Once William is found dead by Victor, Victor runs off to find the creature. Nobody expects Justine to have killed William and she is never executed for it like she is in the novel. I know a lot of some scenes were left out and at times it felt like we were skipping so much information, the production was still really good. I watched a video before going to see it and the director said he didn't want it to be exactly like the play and that the writer wanted to put his own twists in the plot. I think Dear did a good job with the addition his own twists like the creature's dreams about a girl, Victors dreams about William, and a few others throughout the production. Overall, I am glad I went and got to witness a great production of Frankenstein with lots of fear and even a little humor as well.