Neither Halloween nor Hollywood has done much to enhance the literary value of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. While there is an extensive canon of literary criticism postulating in many diverse, conflicting ways about the young author’s intentions, the story has had a huge phenomenological impact upon the popular imagination. Langdon Winner, a Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute scholar widely cited for his gift in uniting the strands of science, politics, and pop culture as the nation’s leading expert on the politics of technology, once summarized succinctly the popularized plot treatment of the story:

“A brilliant but deranged scientist constructs a hideous creature from human parts stolen from graveyards. On a stormy evening in the dead of winter the doctor brings his creature to life and celebrates his triumph. But there is a flaw in the works. The doctor’s demented assistant, Igor, has mistakenly stolen a criminal brain for the artificial man. When the monster awakes, he tears up the laboratory, smashes Doctor Frankenstein, and escapes into the countryside killing people right and left. The doctor is horrified at this development and tries to recapture the deformed beast. But before he can do so, the local townspeople chase down the monster and exterminate him.”

Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, said as much, noting that the public’s firmly entrenched imagination of Frankenstein is based on the deep collective fear of the dangers involved in acquiring knowledge, actually just one – and certainly not necessarily the most important theme – of Shelley’s book. In fact, virtually none of these popularized treatments reflect to any satisfactory expectation of accuracy the plot of the original book published in the early 19th Century.

In Plan-B Theatre’s Radio Hour: Frankenstein, playwright Matthew Bennett’s 52-minute script effectively restores the critical integrity to Shelley’s novel. Yes, Bennett permits the characters to see Frankenstein’s creation – its yellow skin and black lips – as evil, a threat, an ogre, in some instances. However, he also forcefully reminds listeners and audiences that it is Doctor Frankenstein – not the creature – who flees and does so more than once.

Most significantly – which lifts this production well above any typical Halloween radio hour treatment of this story (of which apparently there are many across the nation) – is Bennett’s bold effort to breathe life into the gradually emerging articulate voice of the creature, solidly essayed by actor Tobin Atkinson. In preparing for the role, Atkinson paid close attention to the obstacles of working around borrowed parts the creature would have encountered in learning how to speak. He effectively recreates the effect that, say, having a fish hook on one side of the mouth would have had on his ability to articulate words as well as phonetic challenges such as the letter M.

In Shelley’s book, it is the narrator Walton’s letters that give the reader the opportunity “to listen” to the creature. Walton, a character Shelley so expertly crafted, is actually quite ambivalent about the creature: “Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes voluntarily, and endeavored to recollect what were my duties with regard to this destroyer. I called on him to stay.”

Bennett, challenged with conflating a 220-some page novel first published in 1818 into a lucid script of less than one hour, rises with distinction to the task of presenting how we should see, read – and listen – to the creature. He restores Shelley’s archetypes of sublimity – that reside at the heart of the human mind’s deep conflict with comprehending the unknowable. The result is engrossing emotional, visceral counterpoint – a rare dyad – between Atkinson’s creature and the scientist, powerfully captivated in performance by Doug Fabrizio.

Although this is the fourth annual radio hour for the Halloween season, Plan-B has moved the production out of the radio studio and has staged it as a live radio-style set with music and sound effects and the audience amid the action. The 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. performances on Halloween will air live on KUER’s RadioWest and on XM Satellite Radio.

The stage is set as it would be for a live radio studio production, realized simply and effectively under the direction of Cheryl Ann Cluff. The actors, dressed in simple theatre black, sit on stools in front of the microphones. The pacing is relentless in its energy – caesuras just long enough for the cast and audience to re-situate themselves.

Along with the creature, Atkinson must voice four other characters. Jay Perry handles six characters including Clerval, Frankenstein’s friend since boyhood days, and Walton, the narrator and Frankenstein’s alter ego, which is especially well done. Teresa Sanderson handles four characters with effortless polish, including Elizabeth. And, Fabrizio, like the others, provides crowd noises and whistling wind sounds as required.

Undergirding this production is the continuous heartbeat and pulse featuring original music by Dave Evanoff and the sound effects – an extensive percussion section – dispatched with precision by Jennifer Freed and Sam Moliner. Audience members will likely be amused at the use of celery and carrot sticks, for example, to suggest murderous violence. Yet, for those listening to the production on radio or for those who decide to close their eyes during the production to get that sense, the innocuous instruments of sound effects take on ominous meaning. This sonic architecture propels Bennett’s script with such visceral urgency that one quickly is immersed in the story’s frightening commingled feelings of revenge, remorse, and despair.

The unseen star of this production, of course, is the word. Bennett has paid handsome tribute to Shelley’s prose that, in effect, doubles the construction of Frankenstein. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein says, “I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind … nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave.” Following faithfully, Bennett also explores the linguistic association with Satan and the disgraced Adam as in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Bennett’s natural gnostic senses and uncanny sensitivity for feminine literary structure serve him well here as he portrays ambiguities of the human condition just as effectively as Shelley did.

However, it is the end where his writing truly takes a turn as master playwright. He picks up on Shelley’s representation, during that penultimate race across the icy northern waters, where, indeed, the consciousness of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature are now locked and fused.

But, then Bennett achieves the significant correction, fully manifesting the proper elements of horror and fear for this story. Percy Shelley had revised Mary Shelley’s prose in several instances, most notably the novel’s final sentences in the 1831 edition, the one most widely used. The existing conclusion reads with Walton the narrator: “He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon an ice-raft which lay close to the vessel; he was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in the darkness of distance.”

Mary had written otherwise originally – suggesting only that Walton had lost sight of the creature, keeping intact the small possibility that the creature – with its superhuman strength – could still be alive, thus sustaining the reminder of the dangers of breaching natural law. Percy’s revision instead gave the novel its reassuring, comforting finality. The reader could accept that the creature was gone. Lesson over.

Not so in this production. Bennett’s final stroke is brilliant, restoring Mary Shelley’s original intentions. As Walton narrates to Margaret:

“He sprung from the cabin window as he said this, upon an ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was born away by waves, soon lost in the dark distance, leaving me insensible, Margaret, gaping, stupefied by his grotesquery until at last the memory of Frankenstein’s warning sounded through me. I woke my men, and in a silent snow, we turned our ship to the south.”

It is a shuddering conclusion.

Plan-B will offer eight performances of the show during its run from Oct. 24 to Nov. 2. Be advised that tickets are selling extremely quickly for the production, which is being presented in the Studio Theater of the Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts.

Rounding out the team for this production include Jennifer Free, stage manager; Randy Rasmussen, set; Mark Robinette, sound engineer; Cory Thorell, sound design, and Jennifer Zornow, lighting.

Bennett also will joins Therese Jones, associate professor in the division of medical ethics and humanities in the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, for a free, public hour-long discussion entitled “It’s Alive, It’s Alive!: The Legacy of Frankenstein” on Thursday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m. in the Leonardo.

For more information, see here.