A Chinese version of Frankenstein is staged in Beijing, with four actors playing main roles, Cheng Yuezhu reports.

Veteran actor Huang Hong (left) plays the role of De Lacey in the Chinese version. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The play Frankenstein by Britain's National Theatre marked many Chinese theatergoers' first experience of watching theater in cinema halls, as it was the first performance to have been screened when NT Live first came to China in 2012.

Adapted from British writer Mary Shelley's fable published in 1818, the play highlights the odyssey of scientist Victor Frankenstein's creation, beginning with the creature's birth, and then his exile, education and the search for his creator

Ten years later, the play based on British playwright Nick Dear's adaptation of the classic novel greets the Chinese audience with a new look, with its Chinese version that run at Beijing's Poly Theatre from June 22 to Wednesday.

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Adapted from British writer Mary Shelley's fable published in 1818, the play highlights the odyssey of scientist Victor Frankenstein's creation, beginning with the creature's birth, and then his exile, education and the search for his creator. The Chinese version of the play is codirected by British theater director Dominic Dromgoole and Chinese director Li Ren. As the idea of the project was initiated in 2019, the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges to the collaboration.

According to Li, he and Dromgoole first communicated via video calls to give structure to the play and then polish the details, before Dromgoole came to China and participated in the last four weeks of rehearsals.

Wang Maolei is among the four actors who alternatively play the two main roles of Frankenstein and the creature in the Chinese version. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Li says while they thought at the early stages about localizing the story by adding certain Chinese elements, the team later decided to present the story with authenticity:"This is a classic work that will never go out of date, because it is an exploration of life, humanity and love. These are the universal themes shared by humans, which are timeless for however long."

But the Chinese version is not an exact copy of the original, as both directors say they wanted to present new reflections. A key feature in the Chinese version is adding the role of Mary Shelley, who appears onstage in between scenes, without lines, seemingly keeping an eye on the characters with empathy.

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Dromgoole says he had been thinking about staging Frankenstein, reflecting on Mary Shelley and the circle around her, and brewing ideas for three or four years.

"I always thought it's very important for Mary Shelley to be at the center of it, because it is essentially a story written by a young woman, over two years when she was pregnant during the process. That's an element of the story which I thought we could try and bring out," Dromgoole says.

The play Frankenstein by Britain's National Theatre has been adapted into a Chinese version, which recently premiered at Beijing's Poly Theatre.(PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The original play had two lead actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, switching between the roles of Frankenstein and the creature, and the Chinese version adopts a similar arrangement, with four actors-Yuan Hong, Zheng Yunlong, Yan Nan and Wang Maolei-playing the two roles.

Zheng says he first saw the NT Live screening two years ago and was immediately intrigued by the unusual format of swapping roles, which was new to him.

"I think this setup comes from the dynamics between the two characters, one being the creator, another the created. It helps a lot in performing the roles to put myself in both characters' positions and truly understand them," Zheng says. "What also seemed interesting to me was that during rehearsals, I gradually felt that I was adding certain traits of the creature onto Frankenstein, or vice versa. It is very reasonable that the creator and the created should have something in common, some sort of connection on a spiritual level."

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To Zheng, the greatest difficulty is the physical acting when performing as the creature, which lasts about half an hour from when the creature is born to when he learns to speak. It requires strength and stamina, so the actors went through long periods of physical training daily.

Actor Wang Maolei as Victor Frankenstein and actress Huang Zhaohan as Elizabeth Lavenza at the premiere on June 22. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

While the size of the stage is challenging to the actors, as according to Zheng, the venue is at least four times the size of their rehearsal room, to the directors the story itself is suited for a grand theater setting.

"It is a story of a big scale, almost an operatic scale. It was written at a time when people wrote large, and they wrote huge stories. It was written with a huge engine to drive it through even a big theater,"Dromgoole says.

The former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe in London says he has had a lot of collaboration with China, inviting the National Theatre of China to visit the United Kingdom and also touring plays, including Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice, in the country.

"I think international collaboration is very important at any time, especially during the pandemic. I am a passionate believer that the best way for people to talk is through shared cultural artifacts, and see through those things how they are similar in many ways and different in many ways, and it's the most eloquent way of uncovering that," he adds.

Actor Zheng Yunlong performs the role of the creature at the premiere. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The play is coproduced by the Beijing company ATW Culture, which is NT Live's distributor in China, and Theatre Rocks, a company of Alibaba's online ticketing platform Damai. Co-producer of the play and CEO of ATW Culture Li Congzhou says despite the difficulties brought by the pandemic, the team was determined to make the international cooperation happen.

"As the novel was written by a British author and the original play was staged in the UK, I hoped that a British director would be able to bring the story to China with its original flavor, and also generate new chemistry and interpretations when collaborating with Chinese theater artists," Li Congzhou says.

"It is interesting that such a dark and cruel novel was written by a female author, so Dromgoole changed the standpoint of the story slightly, by adding the role of Mary Shelley, with the care and anxiety about the world from a woman's perspective. Our stage design, music and physical expressions were also redesigned and recreated."