Buck Creek Players

The Buck Creek Players will continue their 2010-2011 season “From Page to Stage” with the Indianapolis Premiere of Frankenstein: A New Musical. Opening Friday, June 3, and running for three weekends through Sunday, June 19, curtain times will be at 8:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with 2:30 p.m. matinees offered on Sunday. All performances will be held at the Buck Creek Playhouse on Indianapolis’ southeast side at 11150 Southeastern Avenue. Tickets are $16 for adults and $14 for students and senior citizens (ages 62 & older) and can be reserved by calling (317) 862-2270. Group discounts are also available for parties of ten or more.

In this stage adaptation of Frankenstein, authors Mark Baron (music), Jeffrey Jackson (book and lyrics), and Gary P. Cohen (original story adaptation) have sought to create a work that was uniquely faithful to Mary Shelley’s original novel while offering a bold, new experience for modern theater audiences. To do so, they have broken with many of the conventions of musical theater to re-imagine the classic allegory as a “memory play” in which time and space are fluid, and in which people and places come instantly alive in the mind of the story’s protagonist, Victor Frankenstein–and vanish just as quickly. The result is a thrilling “mindscape” that brings the timeless myth of Frankenstein to life as never before.

1793. North of the Arctic Circle, a sailing vessel comes upon a man adrift on a floe of ice near death. His name is Victor Frankenstein (Daniel Robert), and he proceeds to tell the ship’s captain, Robert Walton (Michael R. Dodds), the horrifying tale of his twisted life.

Victor is the scion of a prominent family of Geneva, Switzerland, where he enjoyed a childhood of wealth and privilege. As a young boy, he exhibits a brilliant mind and a gift for the natural sciences, and his parents, Alphonse (Steve Hermanson) and Caroline (Paige Scott), dote on him adoringly. Their family soon swells to include Elizabeth (Kelly Najacht)–an orphaned waif whom Victor’s parents adopt as their ward–and later, William (Noah McCullough), Victor’s much-younger brother. Victor’s brother in spirit is Henry Clerval (Brandon Alstott), his childhood friend, and he, Victor, and Elizabeth forge deep bonds of friendship from their earliest days.

When grown, Victor seeks to further his study of the sciences at the University at Ingolstadt, Germany, but vows to one day return to Elizabeth to fulfill the promise of a life together. At the University, Victor endeavors to create life where there was none–to reanimate the dead.

For many months, Victor toils in a clandestine laboratory to create what he hopes will be the perfect human–a giant, fashioned from the body of an executed criminal and other limbs and organs purloined from gallows and graveyards. One November night, he harnesses the awesome force of an electrical storm to breathe life into his creation. But when his creature (Dante J.L. Murray) comes to life, it is not as the perfect human he envisioned, but as a hideous beast.

Thus unfurls the timeless, cautionary tale of Victor Frankenstein, whose noble dreams of grandeur unleash instead a litany of terror and tragedy. Before it is done, everything in his privileged world will be torn asunder, as Victor and his creature are pit against one another in an epic and deadly war of wills that will lead them across the continent and ultimately to the ends of the earth.

Rounding out the talented cast of fifteen are Erin M. Rettig (Justine Moritz), Michael Jones (The Blind Man/Ensemble), Kelsee B. Hankins (Agatha/Ensemble), Matt Campbell (Ensemble), Danielle Carnagua (Ensemble), Craig Underwood (Ensemble), and Cami Zook (Ensemble).

A story of life, love, Promethean dreams and Faustian horror, Frankenstein explores the full gamut of human experience like no other novel ever written. Forget all you have seen in the movies–this is not a Hollywood scarefest populated by lumbering ghouls and wild-eyed maniacs. This is Mary Shelley’s original, brilliant, romantic terror — a dark vision of what lies at the depths of the human soul and what happens when its full power is unleashed.

Director D. Scott Robinson returns to Buck Creek Players after most recently directing The Brain from Planet X, which was awarded 2010’s Best Musical by the Encore Association. Joining Robinson on the production team are Lynne B. Robinson (Producer), Matthew Konrad Tippel (Vocal Director), Aaron B. Bailey (Set Designer/Technical Director), Donna Jacobi & Linda Rowand (Costume Design & Construction), Joanne Johnson (Lighting Designer), Jeff Rowand (Sound Designer), Ruthie Weller-Passman (Assistant Director), Emily Reel (Stage Manager), and Melissa DeVito (Properties).

For more information or directions to the playhouse, please visit the theater’s website at www.buckcreekplayers.com.