Ben Haggarty and Sianed Jones
The Frankenstein Dialogues
Saturday October 4
"In the middle of the world, there is a lake", began Ben Haggarty, "and the lake is surounded by mountains.". He didn't mention that it was beside this lake, almost two hundred years ago, that Mary Shelley first told the story of Frankenstein to a group of friends who had challenged each other to produce a horror story.
The last of the Festival's three storytelling events was unlike the other two in that the story was not based on traditional tales with no fixed wording; Frankenstein's Dialogues was at the same time a substantially faithful account of Mary Shelley's novel, and a twentyfirst century response to it, almost a dialogue with it.
The story of a scientist who creates a living being and then discovers that he has unleashed something which he cannot control, but for which he will not take responsability, has resonances for a modern audience which its original author cannot have guessed at. In this version, the unnamed hero is plagued by dreams of mice who have been subjected to scientific experiments almost as grotesque as his own - but what he takes as signs of fever and delirium, we recognise as factual reality.
Armed with nothing but two top hats, a bouquet of peacock feathers, a violin, a harmonium and a bass guitar, Ben Haggarty and Sianed Jones brought together music and words, fact and fiction, the nineteenth century and the twentyfirst, science and fantasy, into a powerful and atmospheric experience.
The Gala Theatre's Andy Garth worked magic at the sound-desk.
