Michael Stejskal, Scott Westerman and Rashun Carter in “Gods and Monsters” by Book & Lyrics Theatricals at Theater Wit. Back in 1998, a movie titled “Gods and Monsters” told the semi-fictional story of the last days of James Whale, an English movie director best known for having directed “Frankenstein,” “Bride of Frankenstein” and a clutch of other horror movies in the early 1930s.
In the film, both Whale and Boone are white. In Tom Mullen’s new stage adaptation, now in a Chicago world premiere well worth seeing, Boone is written as a Black character, a cautious man and military veteran who wears fake eyeglasses so as not to threaten Hollywood’s studio elites, and thus the already fraught relationship is further complicated by race.
This live “Gods and Monsters” is a very potently performed affair, too, thanks to the veteran Chicago actor Scott Westerman, who plays Whale as a man stymied not so much by the closet door but by his own demons, and Rashun Carter, who offers a measured and sophisticated performance that feels like it really captures the lot of a Black gardener in 1950s Hollywood. Most notably for me, Mullen’s adaptation is vividly evocative of how we all lose power as we age.
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