AFTER tented performances of Alexander Wright's intimate plays Some Small Love Story and Fable at the back of The Gillygate pub in Gillygate, his company The Flanagan Collective step outside for his new street theatre interpretation of Mary Shelley's Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Opening tonight, this promenade adventure is the first adaptation the Stillington company has staged in York since creating the interactive and immersive Sherlock: A Working Hypothesis, which played at the Guildhall in the summer of 2014.

"Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is an interactive and promenade show that takes the audience on an adventure around historic York as they discover the radical life and revolutionary works of Mary Shelley," says writer-director Alexander.

"This exhilarating new show will fuse the politics, science and religion that influenced and plagued the life of one of the early feminist role models of the Romantic Movement and will both tell the fascinating story of Mary Shelley’s life along with her seminal horror story Frankenstein."

The setting is 1818 when a 19-year-old Mary Shelley writes the most seminal horror and sci-fi novel of all time: a tale of science, godless creation, education and death, born from a nightmare on the edge of Lake Geneva.

York Press:

Veronica Hare in The Flanagan Collective's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Picture: Ed Sunman

Despite being a male-dominated story, Frankenstein will see a cast of two women, Veronica Hare and Holly Beasley-Garrigan, bring the story to life in a promenade performance across a variety of locations in York city centre.

Explaining the impetus behind the show, Alexander says: "Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein when she was just 18 after having a nightmare when staying on the edge of Lake Geneva. 1818 was a time of huge social and political shift, and she sat right at the heart of that.

"It’s arguably the first ever science-fiction story and a huge bastion of the horror genre. But it also holds so many ideas about politics, science and society. For us it is amazing to be able to look at our own trappings through a prism of something written nearly 200 years ago."

Holly Beasley-Garrigan, a long-standing member of The Flanagan Collective, says of the casting: "The visibility and role of women is such an important aspect of Mary Shelley’s story. When Frankenstein was first published, Mary Shelley wouldn’t put her name to it.

"It was only in 1831 that she eventually claimed authorship. Equally, within the story there are so few women; it’s all abstracted through male narrators with a male-dominated narrative. So it feels fitting that the show should be created and performed by two women."

The Flanagan Collective, in association with York Theatre Royal, present Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from tonight until November 26 on a journey around the city, starting off at York Theatre Royal at 8pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk