Mary Shelley review, Tricycle

Mary Godwin was the daughter of a radical feminist and a progressive philosopher. By her teens her head was filled with intellectual argument and she was bold enough to take philosophical conjecture literally. At 16 she ran away with the married Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who left behind a pregnant wife and young son. Mary married him three years later after his wife committed suicide. By then, she had given birth to two children and written Frankenstein. It would be published in her married name - Mary Shelley.

Romantic poet

Helen Edmundson's lively play pieces together life in the Godwin household. A mix of facts, fiction and wildly witty lines, their bookshop home becomes the backdrop for a 90 minute costume drama. And that's just the first half. The Godwins get a Jane Austen make-over. It's an at-home with the Bennets. There's the clever, bookish father; the shrewish second wife; the compliant eldest daughter; the feisty second; and the flirty, young one who's asking for trouble.

In the second half we move from fun, laughter and a fruity frisson to dry ice, snow, infant death, suicide and destruction as the fruits of free-thinking start to rot. Can the Godwins and the Shelleys survive public opprobrium and private pain? Polly Teale's production is never dull, though it is half an hour too long. Too much time is spent on amusing external detail and not enough on the internal dialogues that led to Frankenstein. It is only in the long exchange between Mary Shelley and her father that ends proceedings, that the context is explicit.

In conclusion: Those who don't know the significance of Mary Shelley's parentage, or of Frankenstein, will enjoy this warm and jolly, lightweight costume romp. Those who do may wish it were something more than that.

References
Tricycle Theatre, tickets