THE Flanagan Collective already has presented two of the most beautiful, tender, life-affirming short plays of the York year in a tent at The Gillygate pub.

Some Small Love Story and Fable were built on a Fringe festival scale, with voice and music to the fore, so they could be staged anywhere. Now, Alexander Wright's latest drama is on a bigger scale with bigger ideas at play, albeit still with voice as the driving force, as he takes to the streets with his reinterpretation of Mary Shelley's sci-fi horror story Frankenstein.

The Stillington writer-director presents a promenade adventure with a cast of two, Holly Beasley-Garrigan and Veronica Hare, both having featured in Wright's autumn rep in the tent.

Wright's play is as much the story of Mary Shelley's life, feminism and revolutionary work as it is the story of the life of Frankenstein's monster, the two folding in on each other as a psychological study of an equally radical writer and scientist, set against the backdrop of the Romantic Movement.

Each night, at 8pm, the audience will gather at York Theatre Royal to let the interaction of art and science begin as Holly Beasley-Garrigan's swaggering Victorian gent sets out the case for science to tamper with nature.

To the streets we go, first beneath the towering edifice of York Minster, to emphasise the contrast between church and godless creation, "godless" being the word most used by Wright throughout the play where politics, science and religion, as much as personal circumstance, shape Shelley's novel.

First spotted hurrying across the street in a shawl, Hare's Mary Shelley then emerges among the throng, her eye and hand contact making for an "immersive" form of theatre that keeps you on your toes.

Hare will play the scientist Frankenstein too; likewise Beasley-Garrigan will play Percy Bysshe Shelley and the Monster, as we move from Minster to the St William's College grass and onwards to the Grays Court courtyard. They change character at the tip of a hat or by slipping in and out of view, furthering the seamless links between Mary's life and novel, but the play is more of an intellectual exercise than a physical drama, heavy on words, light on "action". Lantern lighting would have added to the atmosphere too.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Flanagan Collective/York Theatre Royal, promenading around York until November 26. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk