PORT ANGELES — Eighteen-year-old Mary and her lover, Percy, went on a summer holiday to Switzerland. They found a villa by Lake Geneva, a body of water not so unlike our Lake Crescent. Their friends Byron and Claire joined them.
Byron — that’s Lord Byron — issued a challenge: Let’s each of us dream up a scary story to tell at night.
Mary couldn’t, not at first. Then came a storm. And a nightmare.
“My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me … gifting the successive images that arose,” she would later write. One vivid picture in her mind was of a doctor and his creature, stirring “with an uneasy, half-vital motion.”
Victor Frankenstein and his monster were born that night in 1816. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel, “Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus,” was published two years later, and has been stirring us ever since.
Starting tonight, for “Frankenstein’s” 200th anniversary, director and designer Richard Stephens brings a retelling of the tale to the Port Angeles Community Playhouse, which happens to be starting its 66th season.
“I could not be more excited. I have been blessed with an amazing cast,” Stephens said of the drama, which runs through Oct. 14.
Though he’s made costumes and acted in numerous local productions, this is his first directing gig with the Port Angeles Community Players since 2010’s “Meet Me in St. Louis.”
In a classic Port Angeles juxtaposition, Stephens and one of his cast members, Jeremy Pederson, are appearing in the Ballet Workshop’s production of “The Nutcracker,” at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center Nov. 30 to Dec. 2. So on weeknights in September, the men have been rushing from one rehearsal to the next.
In “Playing with Fire,” Stephens takes theatergoers to the ice caves of the North Pole, where we meet not only Dr. Victor Frankenstein the elder (Joe Schulz) but also the Creature (Randy Powell), many years after the two emerged from the laboratory.
Victor, nearing the end of his life, flashes back to scenes from his youth, including the days when he was just married to the lovely Elizabeth. Picnicking in the sunshine, they’re played by the equally youthful Jeremy Pederson and Teresa McCaffrey. On the darker side, we also meet Professor Krempe (Mark Valentine), the slippery, sinister one who mentored Victor at university.
And Adam, the Creature in his younger days. Jonas Brown portrays him in his poignant quest for love.
The “After Frankenstein” tale, by contemporary American playwright Barbara Field, is a response to Shelley’s novel, and one ablaze with dialogue about science, innovation and its consequences, parents and children, love and abandonment.
And the cast, Stephens said, is into it.
“There have been several spirited discussions,” he said, about the abuse of technology, the reckless pursuit of discovery, and the question: Does the Creature have a soul?
“The consensus,” said the director, “was that he did.”
For one thing, this guy is a great reader. His favorite book is “Paradise Lost,” John Milton’s tale about the temptation of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from Eden and the overall fall of man.
The Creature also wonders about connecting to God; he talks about an experience he had inside a cathedral where he saw congregants praying. He asks Victor about prayer, which to him looks like ecstasy.
As for Victor, all he wanted to do was create life in a grand scientific experiment, said Schulz, the versatile actor who plays him in his later years. The doctor does not think of the consequences, Schulz added, that will affect everyone around the Creature and himself.
“The most gripping aspect is the familial,” Powell added. “It’s a classic story of father and son.”
Stephens noted that the terra incognita of the North Pole becomes a scalpel of truth, peeling back memories, stories and lies.
“Unlike the book, Victor in the play has some measure of understanding and accepts some responsibility,” he said.
The set, with its icebergs, “is epic,” said McCaffrey, who makes her Port Angeles Community Playhouse debut with this show.
Valentine, a veteran performer and teacher who recently appeared in Key City Public Theatre’s “Hamlet” in Port Townsend, is relishing his role in all of this.
Stephens “has a Midas touch with his theatrical productions. I trust his artistic vision for the stage wholeheartedly,” he said.
Yes, “Playing with Fire” is dark. For Valentine, it’s enthralling.
Stephens added that if this production was a movie, it would be rated PG; to his mind, the show can be a conversation starter for kids and their folks about science, ethics and the heedless pursuit of goals.
In the end, the cat-and-mouse game between Victor and the Creature does arrive at a place of some reconciliation, Stephens said. The play reaches its own denouement and, he believes, it is one emotionally satisfying finale.
‘Playing with Fire (After Frankenstein)’ information
PORT ANGELES — “Playing with Fire (After Frankenstein),” written by Barbara Field and directed by Richard Stephens will be performed at the Port Angeles Community Playhouse, 1235 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Curtain times are 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Tuesdays today through Oct. 13, with 2 p.m. Sunday matinees through Oct. 14.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $8 for youth including high school and college students with college ID. Tuesdays, reservations are $15 and all remaining seats are sold for $8 at the door.
Outlets include www.PACommunityPlayers.com and Brocante Antiques, 105 W. First St., Port Angeles.
For information phone the playhouse at 360-457-0500.
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Diane Urbani de la Paz, a former features editor for the Peninsula Daily News, is a freelance writer living in Port Townsend.
The Creature (Randy Powell), left, confronts his doctor (Joe Schulz) in “Playing with Fire (After Frankenstein),” now at the Port Angeles Community Playhouse. (Diane Urbani de la Paz/for Peninsula Daily News)
