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by Russell Blackwood
When Anna Miller at Seraphim Inc. asked if I would be interested in
speaking with an original cast member of Clive Barker's play Frankenstein in Love,
I jumped at the chance. She said his name was Oliver Parker. He had directed the recent
film version of Othello with Larry Fishburne and would be visiting LA from London for the
next few days. When I asked what character he had played she said, “I think he played
the monster, El Coco.” She gave me the number of his hotel and, sure enough,
the next morning Ollie happily told the tale of El Coco and his early days with The Dog
Company.
No one at that point had been able to tell me the production history of the
play. Ollie remembers, “We played for three weeks at The Cockpit in London.
Next we played the Edinburgh Festival, where we had a successful run of The
History of the Devil a year earlier. After that we performed in Belgium and
Holland. I think that we played it in Edinburgh with Dangerous World.” This
was a piece that he created with Douglas Bradley based on the writings of
William Blake that Clive directed.
“I was 19 when I joined The Dog Company. I guess you could say it cost me my
education. I had just begun attending Cambridge and was working in the
theatre at night. It got to be too much.” I asked, “Did the theatre finally win
out?” “Yes,” he laughingly replied.
When I mentioned how surprised I was that a 20 year old had originally played
El Coco, he said, “That was what was so exciting about those times. We all had this
youthful enthusiasm and earnestness. That and of course Clive’s writing had a lot to
do with the success of these plays.”
Talking about Clive’s unique take on The Monster he said, “El Coco’s not
the
lumbering, grunting Frankenstein monster that the audience is expecting. He’s
witty, sophisticated, and romantic. He’s a bit of an Everyman really.”
“Literally,” I said, “he’s a patchwork of races and sexes all sewn
together.” Ollie said, “Yes, he is. That gave me permission to break free of any
restraints my image of the monster may have had on me.”
We went on to talk about how the American acting style differs from British
actor’s approach. After all, the play was written by a British playwright with
British actors in mind. Surely that had an effect on the way the play was written. I told
him my concern about American actor’s tendency to pause between lines to let things
land. “The script is poetic and full of imagery. Definitely avoid playing it as
naturalism,” he said. He agreed with me that it was akin to playing Shakespeare. If
an actor trusts that the character’s thoughts and emotions are expressed in the text,
he can act on the line, not in the pause. This focuses the character’s thoughts and
feelings into their words, heightens the play’s momentum and power, and ultimately
makes for a more exciting evening of theatre for the audience.
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