I, Victor is a modern-day monster-mash-up fused by a contemporary obsession around true crime serial killers colliding head-on into Mary Shelley’s classic novel, where scientist Victor Frankenstein reanimates a composite cadaver.
It starts with Vic singing like no one is watching, which has its charms, and the early text promises some wonderfully dark and dry comedy with Ellis Jupiter quite engaging in, if not totally inhabiting, the role the young goth woman studying in Geneva.
Rapidly, though, the comic is replaced by the necrotic, with the action reaching stomach-churning proportions accompanied by squelching sound effects and the clichéd bodies in the blender.
Gothic horror lends itself to spoofing, and outrageous, normally emetic levels of goriness can be carried off given a few jump scares, comedy proportionate to the iniquity and a grounded structure, but there is insufficient substance here to realise such an intent.
It is not through lack of components; there is music, love and loss, it is sexy and clever in parts and the text swings from gothic to comic on a syllable—shovel in hand, Vic exhumes a body digging “like an evil Alan Titchmarsh”—but it takes more than just throwing a selection of ingredients into that blender to make a good smoothie.
There are a number of elements that need addressing here: the opening that doesn’t do enough to lay the groundwork for the depravity that follows and the muddled storyline would both be good starting points. There is a horror comedy in I, Victor trying to get out, and writer Issy Flower could yet breathe life into her creature.
I, Victor is part of SE Fest, a new festival based in south east London to promote and celebrate new writing co-hosted by two award-winning theatres, The Bridge House Theatre in Penge and The Jack Studio Theatre in Crofton Park. SE Fest 2024 runs until 14 September.