Historically the BBC have had a cheqeured and varied past with their attempts at putting contemporary TV out live. They succeeded spectacularly with BBC Four's update of The Quatermass Experiment, due in no small part to the involvement of Mark Gatiss, a man who can apparently do no wrong on televeision. Sherlock, The First Men in the Moon, The Lazarus Experiment in Doctor Who, Crooked House and A History of Horror have all been treated to his magic touch, and it's easy to see why. The Quatermass Experiment also starred David Tennant as a doctor, and the often overlooked talents of Jason Flemyng as the titular character. It was shot in and around London, culminating in an eerie showdown in the cavernous chambers of the Tate Modern.
A second, much less succesful live performance on the BBC embodied the 25th anniversary episode of EastEnders, in which many characters forgot their lines, the stunt of a man falling to his death was clearly a man jumping and one of the actors was caught on camera responding to the death of his "son" by attempting to put his fingers down his throat and failing to "vomit in shock", but looking like an idiot. Lacey Turner, playing the pregnant wife of the man who fell to his death, took the role of Elizabeth in Frankenstein's Wedding, where she plays the pregnant wife to be/ wife of Victor Frankenstein, a man who manages to fall from grace and surround himself with death. Maybe Lacey Turner, reasonably good as Lia in recent episodes of Being Human, was trying to do that character type more justice on its second outing, or perhaps she wanted to be part of a live show that wasn't laughable but delivered a cracking story with real emotion and great performances. Either way, she succeeded.
The actors all round offered commendable performances. David Harewood's pitiful and empathetic performance as The Creature, ending with him begging "Shoot me", was the best out of a stellar set. His performance and the updated conception of The Creature as being biomechanical and stem cell based, effectively grown, brought the sometimes dusty story into the hearts of the 21st century audience who were watching. Harewood's performance, the plot update and lastly the makeup which showed that despite not being sewn together from body parts The Creature was still malformed and hideously scarred all combined to make what I think is one of the best Creatures to be seen.
Turner herself offered a stirring performance as the bewildered wife who ends up finding out about her husband's secret from his heinous Creation itself and, having had barely any time to process his Promethean arrogance, is murdered by the animalistic crop harvested from her husband's terrifying sowing. Her empathy with The Creature was excellently portrayed, and the exchange between her and Harewood near the climax was staggering.
Similarly, Mark Williams (who is best known as being from The Fast Show and portraying Arthur Weasley) turned in an excellent and believable performance as Alphonse Frankenstein, edging on megalomanical due to the amount of money he has put into the wedding and desperately subtly lending gravitas to the mariiage as a father who just wants what is best for his remaining son. His performance was so strong that the direct to audience sections, written in as being part of the society wedding aspect of the aristocratic marriage guests talking to the happy crowds, barely shook believability in his character, and the first two musical numbers which closely resembled a wrong turn into a karaoke nightmare didn't take the wind out of his interactions at the very start.
The one character who did appear slightly shaky was Frankenstein himself, portrayed by Andrew Gower, but once he got going (after, coincidentally, roughly the same 20-25 minute window in which the rest of the show was finding its feet) he turned an arrogant and subsequently absolutely crushed professor and scientist who realised too late how he had ruined everything he held dear. His conversations with Henry, here reinvented as not a peer, a student of science, but as an army vicar who will wed Victor and Elizabeth, left some room for improvement, but that may be due to Gower and Andrew Knott's nerves more than anything. The numbers which Gower had to perform, including a rendition of Wires in his laboratory, were brilliantly done; the man has a voice.
The music itself is well worth talking about. Aside from two standalone entertainment numbers at the very beginning to "get the party started", according the characters of the wedding planner and the maid of honour, the musical numbers fit the show seemlessly. The use of I Gotta Feeling, and the performance thereof, did make me feel in the first twenty minutes that we were watching a very poorly prepared tribute gig, but it picked up from there. Which only goes to show that elitists who don't like songs being borrowed for other art or even covers of songs are not always correct.
There's nothing wrong with taking contemporary songs and adding them into your story as you see fit, hell, the Blues Brothers is oddly timeless despite its dated musical references and Jeff Wayne did it to great success in his harrowing version of The War of The Worlds. Whoever chose the music for Frankenstein's Wedding deserves all the praise they can get; I would argue that the ending scenes and the last two or three songs are up there with the most emotional and thrilling moments of Wayne's masterpiece of storytelling, which will stick with me until I breathe my last. Cracking stuff.
Overall, as The Creature ran off through the crowd to disappear from the scene of so many crimes and the choir sang "set my body free, set my spirit free" over and over, I was left with the feeling that I had witnessed an hour and half long live show which certainly delivered an hour of excellence at least, and which brought Frankenstein's more human and relationship based elements to the foreground. This didn't take away from the moral of Shelley's Modern Prometheus tale, but rather it strengthened it, showing exactly how colossally Victor manages to devestate everything. As reinventions go, I'd say it's up there with the best of them, and it would be interesting to see whether or not the recent Danny Boyle stage version of Frankenstein starring Benedict Cumberbatch delivers as much of an emotional and horrifying thrill as this did. Well worth catching on iPlayer if you missed it- just be prepared to grit your teeth through twenty minutes before the quality begins to show.
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