On Stage: Frankenstein

[ via TNL ]

Just back hom from the amazing National Theatre Live's encore screening of Danny Boyle's Frankenstein. I loved every bit of it, and not just because of Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller (it did help, though). Tonight we had Benedict as The Creature - I didn't know which version it would be when I got the tickets and it would have been great either way. 

I'm usually not a fan of modern productions/settings but here everything was convincing. The cast, the stage set, the music, the lighting... I have to confess I think it was much more of an experience to watch on screen because the camera (angles) were amazing and added to the fantastic overall feeling.

The cinema was packed. 98% of the audience were (teenage) Cumberbitches (the fandom among my readers will understand) and the remaing 2% were passionate theatre loving retirees, slightly distracted by the sheer mass of excited females all round them... I even spotted 3 or 4 guys in the audience who were being dragged along by the girlfriends, from the looks of it... I've never seen so many people in the small English Cinema Haydn (my favourite English cinema by the way) here in Vienna, not even at the Coriolanus screening with Tom Hiddleston earlier this year. Back then, the majority of the audience (giggling schoolgirls mostly) came unprepared for the play and looked rather confused and disappointed (they probably should have read the play before). 

Tonight, people certainly knew what they were about to see. Still, everyone was amazed at the end. It was even better than imagined. I was captivated. And I wasn't the only one. Up to this point, the best play I've seen so far (from the overall impression and the quality of the cast) has been The Master and Magarita (based on M. Bulgakov's novel, production with Simon McBurney's Complicite theatre group) at the Wiener Festwochen (read review here) - and that's not any easy one (especially since it was more than 3 hours). Tonight I added another one to that list. (And next's year's HAMLET in London with BC will definitely get there, too. Yeah, I got tickets!)