DETAILS

OYR's 23rd Annual High Performance Rodeo
Big Secret Theatre
Monday, January 5 - Saturday, January 31

More in: Theatre

On a wet and dreary night, Dr. Victor Frankenstein brought the first vestiges of life into a corpse. It was a hideous creature he had spent the last two years creating. The monster, trapped between the dead and the living, was a sick imitation of man — his dull, watery eyes and jaundiced complexion a terrifying sight. After gazing upon this ghastly behemoth, the doctor fled his studio, declaring that, “the beauty of the dream had vanished.”

Frankenstein’s dream, perhaps, alludes to the sordid beginnings of this terrible tale. The horrible creature, birthed in the deepest recesses of Mary Shelley’s young mind, reared its ugly head while she slept. The story made its way into a manuscript that would later be called, Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus?

In homage to the story’s origins, Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre has created a production that recaptures the dream and revives the aging monster. The monster, however, is a little different than the corpse we remember.

This version of Frankenstein is an odd mash-up of director Tim Burton and Dr. Seuss, says production designer Bretta Gerecke. The costumes and set, she says, have been inspired by everything from graphic novels to horror films and the poems of Edward Gorry. Gerecke, who has a degree in interior design from the University of Alberta, says she likes theatre for its transient nature.

“I have a great respect for architecture, sculpture and drawing,” she says. “I changed gears slightly, because theatre is more immediate. It’s also a disposable art form; something that exists for a short time and then it’s gone. There’s something intriguing in that, you are able to take a lot of chances in theatre.”

And with the costumes and set of Frankenstein, she’s definitely taking some chances. After all, she used only paper, chicken wire and cardboard to create this surreal and dreamlike world. With these simple materials, she fashioned massive paper dreads, gnarled leafless trees, nightmarish hands with long, gangly fingers and huge hooped skirts.

She finished the costumes and set with reflective white tissue paper and altered the temperature and texture of the performance throughout the night by bouncing a heavily saturated coloured light from their surface.

Catalyst has performed this version of Frankenstein for the last three years, says Gerecke, and despite the fragility of the costumes, they have held up well. The tissue paper does flake, she admits, but says it makes the performance so much more intriguing. “You’ll find when you see the show that you’ll watch little bits and pieces of paper fall off or almost disintegrate and land on the floor. That’s part of the fun of working with paper, is that it’s ever-changing,” she says, adding that the creature’s long ghoulish hands have been the biggest headache over the years. “We repaired them once a day for the first couple months that we worked on the show, because the fingers were coming off and getting stuck in his hat or stuck on other people.”

Andrew Kushnir, the actor who plays Victor Frankenstein, says his costume is one that’s been in constant evolution since the production first hit the stage. Frankenstein’s suit jacket, he says, has disintegrated over time, changing the look of the costume from performance to performance. For the first little while, Kushnir admits, he felt he should tread lightly. These costumes, though, are made to go on a journey, and the paper is meant to fall off. Because of wear-and-tear, each costume looks slightly different with each performance. As the surface of each is altered, and the lighting is reflected in different ways, the characters appear a little different with each performance. “People who see the first and last run will get a slightly different impression,” says Kushnir. “That’s what is so satisfying about Bretta’s work, is that the show really holds up to several viewings.”

JACQUES IN A BOX

Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal. For those who know dance, this name is all they need to hear to get them leaping off their couches and running to Theatre Junction Grand to watch Les Chambres de Jacques & Jack in a Box. This world-class troupe rarely visits our arid corner of Canada, so the opportunity to see them live should not be missed.

Choreographed by Aszure Barton, the performance will be a double bill featuring an eclectic assortment of dance and music including Vivaldi, Québécois folk tunes and klezmer — yes, klezmer.