Frankenstein  

Reviewed by Dana Martin 
Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group 
Through June 30th 

Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group has created a monster. An unsettling, innovative re-imagining of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, the show experimentally interweaves audience sensory experience into a loose and ghoulish adaptation of the 19th century novel. Suffering has never been so sexy.

The experience begins as the audience gathers outside the theatre, soon to be greeted and coaxed inside the playing space by a mad scientist of sorts, anxious to reveal his horrible creation: a monster. A beautiful, half-naked monster. Soon the room is overtaken by many more sexy/horrible monsters and the audience is drawn into a hellish underworld, led through a tight maze of the gruesome and ghoulish, frightened and frantic. 

The ensemble (Steve Alloway, Nicole A. Craig, Warren Hall, Kristin Horgen, Pia Isabell, Eric Paterniani, Brandon Slezak, Caiti Wiggins, Laura Van Yck, Zack Zoda and Max Zumstein) shape-shift, lurk and morph around the playing space as they guide and maneuver the audience through the show’s many locations and scene shifts. They seem to weave, gyrate and grunt as a single unit, and tell the story through a blend of broad presentation and startling intimacy. Much of the spoken text is dense and often difficult to decipher. The storytelling is shared between several ensemble members throughout the evening, with varying levels of depth and clarity.

Director Zombie Joe effectively engages the audience from every angle and conveys the story largely through movement and the physical environs — a combination that’s engaging and entertaining. Lighting design by Brandon Slezak is particularly on point throughout the space —dark, dangerous and dramatic. Precisely crafted choreography by Pia Isabell compliments the performers’ garish physicality and provides the evening’s clearest storytelling. Sound designer Joseph Bishara creates a moody and appropriately dramatic soundscape.

This incarnation of Frankenstein is a sensory experience first — a blend of a haunted house and a theatre performance in all the right ways. The experience itself is about 30 minutes long and yet feels like a full, satisfying evening of theatre. Zombie Joe’s latest creation, Frankenstein, is an imaginative, ghoulish and thoroughly unsettling experience.

Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group, 4850 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8:30 and 9:30 p.m.; through June 30th. (818) 202-4120 or zombiejoes.Tix.com. Running time: 30 minutes with no intermission