Title: Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre

Author: Peggy Webling

Date of First Publication: 1927

Place of Publication: Preston, Lancashire

Type: Play

Characters: Adaptation

Themes: ALL THEMES

Critical Summary: Though An Adventure in the Macabre is well-known after serving as the basis for Whale’s famous movie version of Shelley’s story, the original stage play is rare and largely unavailable. The summarization and analysis of the play are exclusively based on reading Steven E. Forry’s Hideous Progenies, cited below. The play underwent a series of rewrites, first during its initial two touring years before it was re-released in London in 1930. Theatrical producer Horace Liveright commissioned John Balderston to adapt the play for Broadway, but the adaptation was never performed. Balderston’s adaptation becomes the inspiration for screenwriters at Universal Studios to craft the movie Frankenstein, released in 1931, credited to Francis Edward Faragoh and Garrett Fort. Balderston had written a successful adaptation of Dracula for the stage which became the basis for Universal’s Dracula movie.

In Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre, Dr. Frankenstein enlists the help of two respected professors to make a creature in his own image. As a point of pride in his project, Frankenstein (called Henry) has the creature take on his own name, as though of the same family, the connection further emphasized by having the two similarly dressed. This added dimension to the relationship between creator and creation has been cited as the beginning of the confusion of modern audiences about the Creature’s namelessness, marking the first time both Creature and Creator are called Frankenstein, blurring their identities. Unlike Shelley’s Frankenstein, Webling’s doctor employs alchemy in his quest for an “Elixir of life,” (Forry 93). Science makes its way back into the story with revisions added by John Balderston later, which carries over to the movie adaptation and its electrically-charged laboratory.

In the play, Frankenstein has a fiancée Amelia who, it is made clear, was stolen away by Henry Frankenstein’s friend Victor. Their already complex romance is further complicated by the Creature’s presence. The Creature seems naturally drawn to Frankenstein’s sister and fiancée as though members of his own family. On some level the bond is reciprocated. Dr. Frankenstein’s fiancée attempts to explain the sense of attraction that she feels, “that there was some call from his body to mine that I could not deny […]“‘part [Frankenstein] and part of myself, and we are all one’” (Forry 96).

Despite the complex feelings that the characters have for the creature, the play distinctly and intentionally paints the creature as “a loutish brute imbued with a child’s longing for pleasure and acceptance” (Forry 99). The creature’s childish mental state is shown by his easy excitement at learning to speak or use simple tools. Though not intended as a sympathetic creature, his otherness is an underlying theme of the final acts.

The original stage play performs the Creature’s drowning of a child which results in the creature choosing to live out his existence in seclusion; though rewriting, Balderston brings in the idea of the creation of a mate. In the rewrite, as in the novel, the creature demands that a mate be created. Frankenstein is prevented from following through when a professor (Dr. Waldman) persuades him to abandon the project and destroy his creations entirely. Frankenstein is then violently murdered by the creature. Dr. Waldman shames the creature for his actions and suggests that the creature asks God for forgiveness for murder of the child and of Dr. Frankenstein. The creature cries out, “Men hate me,” and cries out “God help me!” (Forry 99). The creature is then struck dead by lightning.

For further insight on this interesting, if rather confounding, material, see the Frankenstein Meme entries on Whale’s film adaptations of Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and the novel serialization of The Bride of Frankenstein in Pearson Weekly, a promotion of the movie, written by John Balderston & William Hurlbut, two of the movie’s screenwriters.

Administrative Notes: Raeanne Sanchez, CSUF; Dr. David Sandner, CSUF (editing)

Rare & original text unavailable. All information gleaned from:

Forry, Steven E. Hideous Progenies: Dramatizations of Frankenstein from Mary Shelley to the Present. Univ. of Pennsylvania Pr., 1990.