Rootin’ tootin’ monster

The play begins and ends as a silent movie, paying tribute to old-time horror flicks like Nosferatu. Video images project onto the stage backdrop, and super-titles flash across the screen. Winding stairs lead to big, metal doors. The doors open, and you see Dr. Frankenstein on the stage. A Jacob’s ladder electricity conductor creates miniature lightning bolts, and the scene is set for Nevada Performing Arts’ world premiere of Frankenstein: The Monster Musical.

The show was conceived and created by husband-and-wife team John Robert Beardsley and Lesley Anne Bandy. They head up a cast of about 70 people—the primary actors have all worked and performed internationally. Bandy, a dancer at heart who attended the Royal Ballet School in London, choreographed the dance routines. Beardsley choreographed the fights, directs and plays the role of the bounty hunter.

“A bounty hunter?” you ask. “In Frankenstein?”

In the paraphrased words of the Misfits: It all starts with a doctor (Randall Miller) who is working in his lab late one night when his eyes behold an eerie sight … and suddenly to his surprise, his monster (Teel James Glenn) begins to rise and dance and sing the “Monster Mash.” This hit song is the first musical number in Frankenstein and is one of only two songs that were not written by the show’s musical composer, Will Rose. The other is Sergei Prokofiev’s Russian ballet “The Stoneflower.”

Bandy and Beardsley stay true to the feeling and the pared-down plot of Mary Shelley’s horror tale, but they take many creative licenses, and to great effect. Their Monster, after his conception and minor trials in London, catches a refugee boat to America (rather than the Arctic).

On the boat, a sailor (Rose) begins to sing the reggae-influenced “Road of the Refugee.” The Monster joins him, singing lines like, “Eyes of sorrow, eyes of rage, nobody knows what I’ve seen.” At the end of the song, two young girls approach him and embrace his legs. Because he had given these ingénues the hat and coat off his own back, they drape a blanket over him. This blanket cleverly turns into a poncho when the Monster ends up in the American West.

Glenn is very convincing as the childlike monster. His face, scary make-up and all, delicately expresses the pain, sadness and confusion he feels at being ostracized by a world that baffles him. In this sense, the play is true to Shelley’s vision.

Once out West, the Monster finds himself amid barroom brawls, bullwhip showdowns and can-can dances as he is stalked by the bounty hunter and pursued by his creator. In tracking down his invention, Dr. Frankenstein becomes wrapped up in romantic drama, as well. After leaving his ex-fiancée Elizabeth (Jeanette Conkey) in England, the doctor meets a less-refined but equally enchanting woman, Kitty (also Conkey), in a Western honky-tonk.

Between the cast, the songs, the dance numbers, the fight scenes and the originality of the script itself, Frankenstein: The Monster Musical promises to be unlike any musical extravaganza that has come to life in Reno before.