"Conception": theatre review

I attended the world premiere of ‘Conception’ at the Grove Theatre, Eastbourne last night.It was written by and starred Deborah Clair , directed by Lucy Speed and produced by Nicholas Collett (whose ‘The Ghost of a Smile’ was the first thing I saw at the Grove). Tyra Gordon Brown was co-actor in her first performance on stage.

In the first two acts, a solo Deborah Clair brilliantly acted in the role of Mary Shelley. Most of this involved speaking directly to the audience which sometimes seemed a little didactic. Perhaps to avoid this, the actor used a lot of props, moving curtains around and using walking sticks (Byron and Shelley), a mirror (Claire Clairmont) and a pair of gloves (why did these represent John Polidori, a doctor?) tucked into her utility belt, to represent characters. One of my companions thought that this became rather distracting at times, especially when the curtains used for sails kept sliding off the umbrellas which were meant to be boat masks. It must be a difficult balance to strike.

Just before the interval, immediately after Shelley had drowned and been cremated, there was a film clip of Mick Jagger reading Adonais by Percy Shelley poem to eulogise Brian Jones at the Hyde Park concert in 1969. One of my companions felt this was a gimmick, but, given that the poem is about death, it seemed a fitting way to end this section of the play.

The third act, after the interval, was a surprise two-hander when Mary Shelley’s alter-ego (who represented, perhaps, a more modern view) appeared. The two Marys then debated, inter alia, what the book was 'about'. Unfortunately, there were parts of this argument which escaped me because the new Mary sometimes spoke her lines rather too quickly and I couldn’t quite catch all that she said.

I'm not sure the third act added a great deal (though I might nhave thought differently had I heard it all). The first two acts had already fully demonstrated that death-haunted Mary was poorly treated by the men in her life and disempowered as a woman in the society of the time; every member of the audience could extrapolate that to the position of women nowadays. As for the question in the third act about what ‘Frankenstein’ was 'about'; I think the novel is more nuanced than the play suggested (my review of the book can be found here).

But overall the play was enjoyable and I would certainly look forward to other productions by this team.