Tag: Mary Shelley

  • One Night in Geneva:
    The Birth of a Prosperous Progeny

    In 1831, her first novel having achieved pop-culture status thanks to a string of adaptations in England, Europe, and America (see last week’s post), Mary Shelley introduced the second edition of Frankenstein by writing: “Once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper.” Little could she have foreseen just how prosperous it would…

  • T. P. Cooke’s Demon:
    The First Pop-Culture “Frankenstein”

    An explosion. Fire and smoke. Laboratory doors shatter. The Demon appears in a blast of red flame! That’s how the Frankenstein monster made its entrance in the first dramatic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. Loosely adapted by Richard Brinsley Peake and starring actor T. P. Cooke as the monster (referred to as “The Demon” in…

  • First Impressions:
    Discovering Frankenstein

    A recent episode of Prime Stage Mystery Theatre features responses to the question “Where did you first encounter Frankenstein?” The responses are varied, with listeners referencing Mel Brooks, Boris Karloff, and (appropriately) Mary Shelley. But a response closest to my own experience is from a Facebook friend who reports that she had been aware of…

  • Talking Frankenstein

    “You’re going to see and feel the essence of who this man was.”   – Director Art DeConciliis discussing Prime Stage’s upcoming production of Karloff: The Man and the Monster. In an earlier post, I mentioned how actor Boris Karloff—the man who gave us cinema’s iconic performance as the Frankenstein creature—worked for years as a…