STUNNING is the only word to describe Martyn Jessop’s performance as The Creature in the Street Theatre production of Nick Dear’s riveting adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Director Adam Lanfranchi chose this play, first seen in 2011 at the National Theatre, with no thought of caution. His programme notes underline that its exploration of the father/child relationship co-incided with his own thoughts about fatherhood.

What he and his brave cast have produced is an extraordinary and mesmerising look at the human condition, stripped to basic needs and inescapable reactions, posing the timeless questions that surround faith and scientific endeavour. It is about love, and how its lack spells doom to development … such very big issues distilled into a simple story.

Utilising Strode Theatre’s technical facilities to create backdrops of Alpine lakes and peaks, steam trains and the cold of the Arctic, the story of the arrogant young scientist Victor Frankenstein (Jonathan Sansam), who wanted to create human life “because he could” and regardless of the emotional needs of living creatures, unfolds.

With its welcome moments of comedy from Dennis Barwell as the Scottish crofter Ewan and the kind gentleness of the blind De Lacey (Neil Howiantz), the devotion of Elizabeth (Sarah Martin), the teenage curiosity of Frankenstein’s brother William (Braydon Smyth) and the courage of Jo Case as the Female Creature, this 13-strong cast told the familiar 200-year-old tale afresh.

And I am still stunned with admiration of Martyn Jessop, who, with extraordinary physical, vocal and emotional dexterity,  brought to this Creature every ounce of dignity, fear, intelligence, disappointment and total bewilderment at man’s repetitious, careless cruelty, and who, after raping and killing the one person who had been truly kind and understanding, cries out “now I am a man.” Thought-provoking doesn’t begin to encompass this performance, or this production.

It is on until Saturday 15th November. Tickets are still available.

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