Review: James Whale: Beyond Frankenstein, Fringe 2024

“James Whale: Beyond Frankenstein” is a one-man show written and performed by Tim Larkfield.

The first name I saw in the title was “Frankenstein”, and have you even been to the Fringe if you’ve not heard someone shout, “It’s aliiiiive!”.

Mission achieved.

However, this play is really about James Whale—not the British radio and TV host but the British director behind the 1930s Frankenstein movie. That’s the one with Boris Karloff as the monster, which kicked off the movie franchise.

How on earth did a gay English guy end up making Hollywood movies even as the notorious Hays code of extremist American values haunted the studios?

Sadly, there are more questions than answers given that we only have an hour, but here I am, writing about James Whale’s legacy.

Tone

Larkfield is charismatic and great at making eye contact with the audience. Sometimes, characters stretch out towards the seating as they reach for something. I kept on expecting an engaged theatre goer to respond by mime giving him something. I also wouldn’t have been surprised if someone tried to answer a question or instruction from the stage to an off-stage character.

Despite all this charisma, “James Whale: Beyond Frankenstein” is sometimes a little creepy. We get hints of creep in the snippets of monster movies, as Frankenstein is pretty dark. The darkness in Mary Shelley’s classic is made all the worse because so few people in Hollywood actually understand the monster. However, the real nasty business in this play comes from the era, the Hays code, persecution, religious fervour, and the rest. It’s sinister as hell!

However, this is not a horror play. It displays a range of emotions, history, and characters—all expertly done by just one actor—and “James Whale: Beyond Frankenstein” is a tour de force through them all.

What to expect

There’s a horseshoe of seats around a little stage and a stool. There’s also professional lighting on a rig in the ceiling, and “James Whale: Beyond Frankenstein”  makes good use of it. However, it does mean you might end up sitting directly in the heat rays.

The vast majority of the time is given over to the solo play. Tim could have gone on for longer, stamina willing, and we’re whizzing through an abridged James Whale story. It felt like the right amount of time, though. There’s enough here to teach me a little and bait my interest.

Despite some rapid scene changes, which are rarely foreshadowed or announced with lights, it’s easy to follow. If the scene looks like a damsel in distress fleeing from a monster, then we’re doing a scene from the movie, and then, when the posture and voice change, we might be talking about life in Hollywood in the bar after the shot.

The one thing I’m wrestling over is whether there should be a trigger warning about the nature of certain deaths the play hints at. There is one for strobe lighting.

Overall

I enjoyed “James Whale: Beyond Frankenstein”, and I’m inspired to watch some of Whale’s monster movies, pretending I have the time to do so.

I also learned from the play but felt at times that it shied away from going a bit deeper into the hot topics. Just how damaging was Hays? Just what happened to Whale? Of course, if it hadn’t been for the success of Beyond Frankenstein, I wouldn’t know to ask these questions.

I think “James Whale: Beyond Frankenstein” is a good choice for fans of solo theatre, people interested in the 1930 movie, or people curious about James Whale. I don’t think it’ll hold kids’ attention, but the audience of adults today was fixated.