Creature feature: The return of Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Gothic classic that has been reimagined by local theatre outfit Shake & Stir.
How do you humanise one of Gothic literature’s most monstrous and misunderstood characters? It was a challenge that Brisbane-based theatre company Shake & Stir had to confront as they stitched together their adaptation of Frankenstein, which returns to QPAC in May.
Director Nick Skubij knew that the birth of the “Creature”, as it is referred to in Mary Shelley’s literary masterpiece, would evoke repulsion, but he also wanted audiences to feel a sense of compassion.
“Obviously, there is the moment that everyone knows from Frankenstein where the Creature comes to life and we picture electricity,” Skubij says. “This is connected to the galvanism concept of electrifying dead tissue and electrical impulses making it go. There’s no point in getting away from that, but what is our birth moment, what does it look like? Do we go down the path of what people are expecting?”
The solution was to strip the scene back to the essentials.
“It is literally a single person under a single light on stage for about four minutes,” Skubij says. “But what the actor is doing physically and what that represents allows the audience to build an emotional connection to that character straight away, so they’re then going to be rooting for that character.”
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‘There’s no bolts out of its neck or anything like that. It is a grotesque, hideous -looking thing’
Although Craig Wilkinson’s digital design plays an important part in the production, Skubij and his Shake & Stir co-artistic directors Nelle Lee and Ross Balbuziente wanted to ground the Creature by focusing on costume, make-up and movement. To achieve this they asked film-effects expert Steven Boyle to create a spellbinding latex suit so that the character (played by Jeremiah Wray) would reflect Shelley’s descriptions in the book.
“This is literally a thing that’s been built by stitching together human parts,” Skubij says. “There’s no bolts out of its neck or anything like that. It is a grotesque, hideous -looking thing, and we wanted to really allow the audience to see that as much as we could.”
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Part of the genius of Frankenstein is its unconventional narration – we are told the story from multiple perspectives, including the Creature itself. Skubij wanted to capitalise on this opportunity, and also tap into the parallels between the world that inspired the novel – and our own.
“The story is about the Industrial Revolution and how machines were coming, which you could say is happening today as well. The artistry of craft is going away for the automation of the machine.”
Shake & Stir Theatre Co will celebrate 20 years of theatre making in 2026. Their memorable adaptations include Animal Farm, 1984, A Christmas Carol and Dracula. The three co-founders started their careers as actors before taking on the other creative roles needed to get a show on the stage. In recent years, the division has typically seen Lee as writer, Skubij as director and Balbuziente as producer. Their regular collaborators include Wilkinson and designer Josh McIntosh.
Beyond their own impressive portfolio of productions, Shake & Stir is actively investing in new works. Later this month, Skubij, Lee and Balbuziente will travel to New York to attend the opening night performance of Just in Time, the new Bobby Darin musical they are co-producing. Another show they are backing – a jukebox musical adaptation of the Heath Ledger film, A Knight’s Tale, is about to open in Manchester, in the UK.
“Here in Australia, some of the work that comes out of the creatives in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne – it’s amazing – and it doesn’t get featured as much outside of our own country,” Skubij says. “We love ‘direct from Broadway, direct from the West End’, but why can’t it be ‘direct from Australia’ playing Broadway or the West End? So that’s the goal.”
Frankenstein plays QPAC’s Playhouse, May 24 to June 8.