Monster Mash

The atmosphere was electric in the Opera House last Thursday for San Francisco Ballet's revival of "Frankenstein." The crackle in the air recalled that of last year's premiere, when the house was completely sold out and tickets could not be had for the Western Hemisphere premiere of Liam Scarlett's ballet. Scarlett is the youngest-ever choreographer in Residence for the Royal Ballet (London), who had co-commissioned the piece with SFB.

The audience skewed young. I can't remember seeing so many fresh faces and eagerly darting people in the lobby and the aisles. Perhaps the high-tech theme attracted techies, perhaps the popularity of the movie versions encouraged younger folk to try a crossover? In any case, it was thrilling to feel such anticipation. As the lights went down, the sound of a heartbeat emerged from the orchestra in deep, pulsing notes, and the front-cloth imagery began to morph. Against a background of blood, a bone-white skull and vertebrae began to grow, to add new body parts. On the edges of the screen, annotative scribbled lines appeared as marginalia. This was our introduction to John MacFarlane's brilliant stage designs, which never ceased to create the perfect scene for the action we were about to see.

Everyone knows the story, of course, and in so many different versions. What's most distinctive here is the look of the scene. The monster looks the part, Vitor Luiz is a noble savage hideously scarred, but strangely beautiful. He completely supplanted memories of Boris Karloff, which is a colossal achievement in itself. The dark and stormy night, the Frankenstein mansion, the operating theater, the pastoral garden-scene in which the monster kills the little boy, the surreal ballroom in the last act ("I'll be with you on your wedding-night") - all of these are realized in brilliant detail. Most of all, the grisly back-alley scene in which the sweet servant-girl (Julia Rowe, superb in the role), who's been framed with the murder and condemned by a turbulent mob, is hanged, twitching. This is the second-act curtain, and it is gut-wrenching.