Synetic Theatre is known for image-based theater. This theater focuses on movement and the physical aspect of expression; dialogue is scant and succinct, merely scattered about the performance to clarify nebulous actions.
This season, Synetic has offered the District theater community Frankenstein, an exploration of Mary Shelley’s classic story through the human body. The play was adapted to the stage by Nathan Weinberger and Paata Tsikurishvili, who also directed the play.
Under Tsikurishvili’s hand, the actors inhabit their characters perfectly. Most notably, Dan Istrate, who plays Victor Frankenstein, finds a sense of great wonderment and awe in his character. He spends the whole play searching: at first for the answer to the continuation of life and later for the end of life. Irakli Kavsadze, the Creature, faultlessly conjures up a childlike spirit and an awkward, unbalanced body for his character. Kavsadze transitions from child to complex adult, which seems to rush the process of development and the syntax of the play. Yet, his portrayal of the Creature is only true to the rushed tempo of the performance.
This hurried approach to Frankenstein runs counter to the idea of storytelling. Moreover, the characters are left largely undeveloped and the script feels like an adaptation from an abridged version of Mary Shelley’s classic tale. The play’s two main protagonists, Victor and his Creature, suffer greatly from this underdevelopment. Neither engages in a complex relationship with any of the other characters. Rather, everyone in the play serves as a foil to these two players. No one has an identity beyond “Friend of Victor” or “Victim of the Creature.” The playwrights have created a one-sided story. The audience members don’t feel the compassion these characters have for other people as they are all void of motives.
Of course, the dance and movement of the play are the main spectacles. Frankenstein doesn’t rely on elaborate dance routines so much as various graceful, dance-like movements. In one scene, a fight breaks out between townsfolk and the Creature. As the fists fly, everything in the fight glides fluidly as they take the tempo down to near slow motion. Moments like this in Frankenstein deliver the imagistic power and impact that Synetic Theatre is known for.
Renowned choreographer and Georgetown Performing Arts Instructor Irina Tsikurishvili is responsible for these brilliant sequences. Through experiment and method, she has accomplished the feat of making the play become highly realistic while still managing to carry a twinge of fantasy.
While Frankenstein shines in its technical achievements, it fails in its presentation of the story. Synetic is great with images and movement, but in this setting it seems that they are unable to turn the story into anything more than a quick anecdote.
Frankenstein is showing at the Kennedy Center through Oct. 1. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Tues.-Fri. and 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Sat.-Sun.
