Frankenstein Movie And Book Comparison

Since most of the major plot points were hit and only a few small changes were made to the plot to make the story better suit a stage performance, Art-in-Relation’s 2014 production of Frankenstein - A New Musical, the book and lyrics by Jeffrey Jackson, remained very faithful to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein plot wise, but due to the excessive steampunk influences in the costumes and the immersion breaking casting decisions and set design, the musical’s visuals greatly departed from the descriptions in Shelley’s book, making watching the musical a very different experience from reading Shelley’s book. What few changes there were plot wise between the musical and Shelley’s book can typically be attributed to the change in the type of media. For example, in Shelley’s book,

In Shelley’s book, Frankenstein states that “when… [he was] seventeen… [he became] a student at the University of Ingolstadt.” (Shelley 38) While Frankenstein ages throughout Shelley’s book, most of it takes place when he was college aged or a few years older. It is the same in the musical except, Frankenstein’s actor is much older than the character he is supposed to be portraying and it’s especially apparent in his scenes with Elizabeth, whose actress looks much closer to the correct age of her character, which should be around the same as Victor, since they were “playfellow[s.]” (Shelley 31) The musical is also visually very different set wise, while part of the set looks very similar to what Shelley probably attended, the very out of place, industrial giant metal structure in the center of the stage is not. Victor creates his creature “in a… chamber… at the top of the house and separated by all other apartments” not in an abandoned factory, which the musical set seems to be implying. (Shelley 50) Victor’s appearance and the set design look very different from what Shelley