ARRIVING in the ginnel that leads to the York Medical Society's Victorian headquarters off Stonegate, you are hurried indoors by a fraught figure, exhausted as a spent match. "There's a war on," he cautions.
The Austro-Prussian War of 1866, to be precise: the new setting for Nick Lane's adaptation of Mary Shelley's gothic horror story for the latest site-specific production from York company Theatre Mill, whose producer, Rebecca Stafford, has found yet another unexpected, Grade II-listed location to house a play for the first time.
Passing cabinets of medical artefacts, as staff rush around, you find yourself in what would normally be the YMS lecture hall. On first inspection, the floor and walls could pass for a Jason Pollock art explosion, but on closer examination this is the daily detritus of a blood and gore-splattered field hospital, ripped sheets and all.
It is a narrow room with a capacity of only 58, made all the narrower by the proximity of the audience to the improvised stage, designed so instantly evocatively by Graham Kirk, with Tabitha Grove's costumes vital to the impact too.
You are in the war-torn ruins of Ingolstadt's once-proud university where a man screams in pain and torment as he collapses at the feet of an ambitious physician, Gerber (Zach Lee), and a skittish nurse, Agatha (Viktoria Kay). This is the broken shell of one Victor Frankenstein (Richard Keightley), once the genius pupil of the university, whose skills of scientific exploration far outstripped the powers of his tutors.
Zach Lee's Gerber, Richard Keightley's Victor Frankenstein and Viktoria Kay's Agatha in Theatre Mill's Frankenstein Revelations. Picture: Tom Jackson
Dr Frankenstein has a story to tell – hence the title Frankenstein Revelations – but must do so through the haze and distortion of hallucinogenic drugs administered by the exploitative Gerber. Nevertheless Frankenstein will plough on with his tale as he recalls how he created life and then spurned it, consigning his creation to being an outcast who craved love from his "father".
The Monster (Zach Lee, with his loosely bandaged, scar-tissue face and patchwork clothing) is a painfully human figure, rather than the freak show of bolt-necked movie depictions, while writer-director Lane takes his Frankenstein to the darkest crevices of his troubled mind, brilliantly portrayed by Keightley.
Around him, the livewire Lee and the particularly impressive Kay play myriad roles, floating in and out of Frankenstein's turmoil, injecting chill humour on occasion, mystery and terror on others, in a psychological thriller that affirms once more that Nick Lane is one of the gems of Yorkshire theatre, here revealing Frankenstein in a new light.
The secret is out: this is another Theatre Mill hit, and such is the fevered rush for tickets that an announcement to meet demand is expected on Wednesday.
Frankenstein Revelations, Theatre Mill, York Medical Society, run extended to March 11, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
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