This Leeds Playhouse/imitating the dog co-production delivers an immensely impressive piece of stage-craft, with two actors who must not only vary their vocal patterns between a naturalistic contemporary style and the more formal delivery required by a novel published in 1818, but also act out emotions via some almost acrobatic moments of physical expression. The set, a pared-down modern flat, uses screens, projections and some stunning lighting design to wrap the action in suggestions of Arctic snow, laboratories and stormy seas – but impressively as these Gothic locations  are evoked, you might be wondering (as, alas, a decidedly subdued audience seemed to be doing) why our  unexpected protagonists were holed up in a sixth-floor flat reflecting the all-too-familiar neuroses of 21st century urban existence. This framing device, with a young couple negotiating the anxieties of imminent parenthood in an unstable world, offers a thoughtful reflection of what is surely the sub-text of Mary Shelley’s novel, penned by a young woman whose illicit relationship with a free-thinking poet had already brought her the pains of motherhood and loss. The problem, though, is that not everyone will make the connection, not everyone has read the (really rather philosophical) original book and most of us are more likely to know the movie versions which spin out the Frankenstein saga along different lines of drama. Once the couple start acting out the text of the novel, clarification of the connections might have been established, but as I’m guessing that relatively few viewers recognise, for example, that a letter written to his sister by an English explorer bound for the Arctic is the real opening of “Frankenstein”, I’d question how quickly the parallels were grasped. This visually stunning production thoughtfully integrated performers with a technically impressive set but took for granted that everyone knows the novel well-enough to appreciate this variation/adaptation/expansion of its underlying themes, which I’m not convinced was the case.

Gail-Nina Anderson