Author Mary Shelley reckons with her creations in an immersive new retelling of her novel Frankenstein, now running at the historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. Mary Shelley’s Monsters runs through October 12. It’s staged in a small chapel within the cemetery that seats only 50 guests per each 85-minute performance.
Choosing the Location
Maryland-based playwright Bob Bartlett, a theatre professor at Bowie University, is no stranger to site-specific theatre. He’s staged works at a laundromat, in record stores, and even in the middle of the woods (for Lýkos Ánthrōpos, his 2022 play about a werewolf).
The Helen Hayes–award–winner has said that he often writes with specific locations in mind. He penned Mary Shelley’s Monsters while in residency with La MaMa Umbria International. Before leaving for Italy, he spent a week writing in the chapel at Congressional Cemetery. “The opportunity to share the play with audiences at Congressional Cemetery is truly special,” he says. “Opening the run of the play in the fall as we approach spooky season will be thrilling.”
Positive Reviews
Directed by Alex Levy, artistic and managing director at 1st Stage in Tysons, the three-hander play features Katrina Clark as Mary Shelley, Jon Beal as the Creature, and JC Payne as Victor Frankenstein. It debuted on September 18 and is already seeing positive reviews.
John Stoltenberg for DC Theater Arts called the play “a magnificent meditation on life and death and women and men” and praised the acting, writing, directing, and sound design. “Inside the chapel, with its eerie acoustics (episodically erupting in sound designer Kenny Neal’s thunderclaps), director Alex Levy has crafted a hauntingly theatrical production using only the existing chapel’s entrance, nave, and chancel along with the slightest of lighting effects: candelabras and sconces,” he said.
The Play’s Inspiration
With fear of AI and its impacts inspiring many Frankenstein adaptations, Bartlett said that he “set out to write a poetic exploration of that fear, then and now, of science, progress, and death,” and acknowledges that writing it was daunting at times. “I did not want to write another adaptation which retells the plot of the novel. Or one that recounts the infamous literary history of the novel’s creation, nor one that retells Mary’s life. So I mashed together the three in a meta exploration of Shelley and her novel.”
Tickets for Mary Shelley’s Monsters are $35 and can be purchased online. It runs through October 12 on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Congressional Cemetery: 1801 E. St SE, Washington, DC
Feature image courtesy Teresa Castracane
