Deep Cove Stage opens
efore invited audience

Frankenstein by Walter Learn-
ing and Alden Nowlan,
directed by James G. Hebb.
Deep Cove Shaw Theatre to
Oct. 31. Reservations: 929-
9236.

EEP COVE Stage
opened its first ma-
ie jor production in

Deep Cove’s new Shaw
Theatre last Wednesday
night before an invited au-
dience of almost 100 guests.

And if the challenge of
Frankenstein is a large one fora
community theatre group, con-
sider for a moment the challenge
the Deep Cove Cultural Society
(DCCS) faced in creating the polit-
ical will to build a new theatre in a
time of recession.

But according to Ann Booth and
Damian Inwood of the DCCS, the
huge level of local support for the
theatre and cultural centre made it
easier for both North Vancouver
District and the federal govern-
ment to commit to funding.

That focal support was honored

| Wednesday night as the individu-
als and businesses who had pur-
.- chased seats for the not incon-
siderable sum of $300 and $500
were given 'a warm welcome by
Inwood. .

“We are here to honor 60 very
special patrons of the arts. You are
the people who had the faith to
put up your own money when this
was just an idea,” said Inwood.

” "We've got a building here

“that is the envy of most aveas in
the Lower Mainland. | have peo-
ple ask me ‘How did you manage
to do it’ and the answer is because
of you,” he continued.

The set for Frankenstein loomed
over Inwood as he spoke and
could also be the envy of many
Lower Mainfand theatre com-
panies.

Designed hy director-James
Hebb and painted by Lindsay
Ross, the traditional upper level
crossover and staircase arrange-
ment lends a solidity to the pro-
duction that serves the play well,
while an ingenious pivoting facade
serves to change locale cleverly, if
slowly.

Hebb, J was told, is also respon-
sible for the creature mask, sundry
body parts in bottles, the poster
design and the sound score that
often supports the gothic at-
mosphere quite well. Obviously a
man of many talents.

The poster sent to the News was
requested as wall decoration by
everyone who saw it.

Learning and Nowlan’s play (it
would be appropriate, not to men-
tion legal, if they had received a
program credit) is based closely on
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's
famous novel of the same name.

Written in 1818 at the surprising
age of 21, her book is a curious
mixture of naive romanticism and
moral and psychological
sophistication.

The play moves the action for-
ward into the height of the Indus-
trial Revolution but retains much
of Shelley’s original tone with
sententious lines like: “If we
humans were a little less sensitive-
we'd all be brutes, if we were a lit-
tle more sensitive we'd all be lu-
natics.””

But despite such self-conscious
musings the play has a moral core
that makes it interesting: a 19th
century take on the legend of
Prometheus. —

What makes the creature that
the gadlike Frankenstein creates in
his laboratory almosi human is its
awareness of what it is not.

Ultimately, it is the creature’s
moral anguish rather than its phys-
ical deformity that requires our pi-
ty. .
Opening night glitches inter-
rupted the pacing of the produc-
tion with the result that David

- * Working it out with Dr, Seuss

From page 33

But hands up those, besides
. Theatre 101 students, who have
read the play.

While | thought that some of the
theatrical analogies could have
been obscure, perhaps Derbyshire
is ahead of me.

Confessing to not getting ‘‘it’’
(Beckett, not EST), Derbyshire
{Sood) instead says that she work-
ed her life philosophy out with the
aid of Dr. Seuss, finding her voice

as a speck of dust on the tip of
Horton the elephant's trunk.

And in case the implication that
we all have a voice to offer is
missed, director Donna Spencer
crafts a final moment of pure
magic in the sand of Jeffrey
Norgren’s exceilent set.

We are all, after all, potential
angeis and creating God in our
own image need not be idolatry.
See the play ... but not from the
front row,

Prenat

a
nee

=| On Halloween night,

James as Count Victor von
Frankenstein was unable to con-
sistently stoke the inner fires of
obsession, while Mark James
Grafstrom 25 The Creature had
trouble firding the magic of the
mask. .

However, if Hebb can harness
the potential of his cast, including
some good moments from John
Haner, Shanda Walters and
Deborah McKay, Deep Cove Stage
can feel proud of what it has
achieved.

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