Visionary author Mary Shelley’s links to Dundee are legendary.
The English novelist famously used her experiences of an extended stay in the city as inspiration for her genre-defining 1818 Gothic yarn Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.
Shelley’s story has been adapted for the big screen countless times, but stage versions have been less common.
Modern version of a classic
That said, they actually date all the way back to a quick-out-the-blocks 1823 London adaptation, almost 80 years before its cinema debut.
A recent version of the horror classic to make the stage is that by Aberdeen-born writer Rona Munro – first touring the UK in 2019 when it enjoyed a Courier Country opening stint at Perth Theatre.
The 21st Century feminist take on Shelley’s masterpiece introduces Frankenstein’s teenage author as a character, so that audiences can, in Munro’s words, “see some of the emotional journey she went through” to create her story.
Shelley in the story
The intention is to make the one-time prodigy quite literally visible in her own narrative, which is traditionally dominated in others’ hands by the titular young scientist and the sapient, tragic creature he breathed life into.
Munro, 62, says: “What’s really interesting when you read the book is that some of it seems so contemporary, and those are the bits people tend to ignore because they don’t fit with the Hammer Horror view of it.”
- Frankenstein, Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, June 23-25, onfife.com
Conversation