Beginning with a thundering bang of lightning, Manual Cinema recreates English novelist Mary Shelly’s well-known gothic horror, Frankenstein.

Perfect for the Halloween season, the show embraced Shelly’s 1800s prometheus with live animation filling the stage with puppeteers, pianos, clarinets, flutes and an array of musical instruments.

The film, a now five-year running show, begins not in the beautiful yet horror stricken Swiss Alps but in Shelly’s own life — documenting the events that lead up to her defining monument.

The cinema shows Shelly’s deep loss and grief during her time writing the novel. The death of her infant girl, Clara, creates an indescribable agony in her heart which the film depicts better than ever with its profound silence and orchestra. The performance bellows the ever presence of Clara in Mary Shelly’s mind and heart during her creation of the performance, depicting it with loud shifts from the child to Victor’s creation of life. 

The film also documents the prejudice faced by Mary Shelly from her husband and others living in a society that denied rights to many groups, mapping the tension and forces against which Shelly had to maneuver. 

Documenting the inspiration for her work, the audience is thrust into Shelly’s gothic wilderness, the story unfolding into horror, pain, grief, regret and occasional humor. It portrays with exceptional skill the discovery of the world by Frankenstein’s monster — his first touch with violence. 

The film employs catharsis as found in Seneca’s tragedies with the monster wrecking violence unbeknownst to itself on its most loved human beings, an adaptation unique to the show.

It ends with the “gravitas” of the vengeance between the creator and the creation, with the final death of both in the great white space of the Arctic Circle.

Lia Kohl, who plays the cello, aux percussion and vocals for Manual Cinema’s Frankestein, spoke on the show after performing on it for five years.

“It’s about creativity,” Kohl said. “Making something that has its own life.”

 Co-Artistic Director of Manual Cinema, Sarah Fornace, who plays Victor Frankenstein and Mary Shelly in the film, said performing in Madison was a memorable experience. 

“It was a great audience,” Fornace said. “Such a beautiful theater. We got to see the sunset by the lake yesterday. We are thrilled to be here and we hope that [Madison] has enjoyed it.”