Algonquin’s Frankenstein brings off some powerful visuals.

Photo credit: Andrew Alexander. He’s a grotesque, man-made creature on a rampage of anger and violence — and ultimately murder. But you also sense that he has a soul — of sorts. So you can’t deny his anguish of spirit, his suffering, his feelings of desolation and abandonment as he wanders through a hostile terrain in a poignant search for his maker.

That terrain is as much metaphysical and spiritual as it is horrifying, and this is one of the strengths of Frankenstein: The Man Who Became God, the play that the Algonquin College theatre program has bravely decided to mount.

This is not the Frankenstein of actor Boris Karloff and director James Whale, although their 80-year-old movies continue to have the greatest impact on the popular imagination. This stage piece by Alden Nowlan and Walter Learning is far truer to the purpose of Mary Shelley, the author of the original book, but beyond that, you find it carries its own special resonance.

Consider Evan Gilmore’s performance as the Creature who has been designed and brought to appalling and sorrowful life by Victor Von Frankenstein who then — repulsed by his creation — abandons him. Gilmore gets beyond the grotesque and the horrific — although those elements certainly exist and his body language can be riveting — to create genuine pathos and a sense of yearning and loss.

The play can be a challenge even to seasoned professionals, and there are times in this visually striking production when performances struggle with the conventions of Gothic melodrama and degenerate into archness and hollow posturing.

But there is certainly substance to Gilmore’s portrayal. He does, to a considerable degree, inhabit this tormented character. And in so doing, he helps bring into bold relief some of the play’s preoccupations. This is not just another regurgitation of a timeless monster story: it is also a meditation, filtered through the prism of popular entertainment, on such eternal matters of the spirit as free will, broken covenants, forgiveness, and the presumption of playing God.

Its qualities are a product of the temperaments of the playwrights who collaborated on it — the late Alden Nowlan, a New Brunswick poet with an empathy for the lonely and the benighted, and Walter Learning, a former Newfoundland philosophy professor turned theatre professional. And there is sufficient merit in Algonquin’s production of this 40-year-old play to reaffirm its worth.

Indeed, director Zach Counsil, who also designed the special effects, has brought off some astonishing visual moments. He and his team — including many students — didn’t have the luxury of a big budget, so what they have achieved is a triumph of the imagination. You get it in the dramatic opening scene aboard an Arctic vessel beset by shrieking winds and unimaginable horrors outside. You get it in Frankenstein’s laboratory during that seminal sequence when the shrouded Creature is brought to tormented life by primitive electronic means. The production is soaked in atmosphere thanks to Counsil’s adept staging, David Magladry’s terrific set and lighting designs (an all-purpose nightmare of ropes, chains, giant cogs, dangling tentacles, mesh, scaffolding, ominously flickering lanterns, and masts looming high into the darkness) and Jeremy Piamonte’s outstanding soundscape. The costumes, unfortunately, are more problematic — ill-fitting in some cases and leaving some performers visibly uncomfortable wearing them.
Opening night suggested that some performers are still struggling to deal with their characters. As Victor Von Frankenstein, Garrett Brink delivers a telling moment when he

arrogantly declares — “I am God!” He is about to bring his Creature to life (with the reluctant aid of his assistant Fritz, played with quivering credibility by Bruno Serner) and his obsession here is palpable. But Brink is fighting his own youthfulness in this role while also valiantly attempting to avoid camp in his performance. There are times when he does communicate Victor’s terror and despair over what he has wrought in bringing a monster into the world, but there are also times when the driven doctor lurches uncertainly between a boyish earnestness and strident melodramatics. One suspects his characterization will mature and show its full potential as the run continues.

Matthew Gillen delivers a confident, witty performance (and yes the play has moments of comedy) as Victor’s best friend, and Beckie Lindsay and Ryan Johnson are a perkily amusing pair of servants, although their Cockney accents are discordant, given that everyone else in the show speaks North American English.

FRANKENSTEIN: THE MAN WHO BECAME GOD

By Alden Nowlan and Walter Learning

Algonquin College Theatre Arts, March 19 to 23

Reservations: 613 727 4723, Extension 5784

Director: Zach Counsil