Lockdown

Creative people just can't help themselves, can they? This weekend was the Lockdown Festival, whose four 'stages' had performances streamed from the living rooms, bedrooms, gardens and sheds of poets, DJs, bands, singers... And there were workshops, just like a 3D festival. How on earth do you teach a skill like bellydancing or beatboxing with no feedback from the punters at all? Without even knowing whether anyone is watching?

Hats off to them all. Especially since they have no opportunity at the moment to be paid for their performances but had nonetheless made this a benefit - all donations went to NHS charities and Oxfordshire Mind.


After this, we had a family Zoom talking about Frankenstein, which five of us had just seen online and one had seen in the theatre nine years ago (with nearby locked-down flatmate for fact-checking). Was it about the hubris of science taking over the role of god? Or the consequences of human behaviour on others? What was the steampunk train all about? Why were all the mothers already dead before the play started and the potential mothers killed during the play? How faithful was this interpretation to Mary Shelley's original (which only one of us had read)? Why was (what I thought was) the moral heart of the play delivered in such appallingly leaden language? ("He must learn to take responsibility for his actions // We must always stand up for the disadvantaged." // "Absolutely. Give voice to the oppressed.")

We had one of the most wide-ranging discussions of a play I've ever had with fellow theatre-goers. How has it taken lockdown to do this?

Afterwards, as promised yesterday, I watched the two versions of the play in parallel. I preferred Jonny Lee Miller in both roles. Benedict Cumberbatch, in either role, is slower and more melodramatic. If I had to choose one performance over the other it would be Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature and Benedict Cumberbatch as Frankenstein.