“LIFE TO DEATH. DEATH TO LIFE.”

An evening ghost story competition in Villa Diodata frames David Catlin’s brilliant new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with Shelley (Cordelia Dewdney), her married lover, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Walter Briggs), Lord Byron (Keith A. Gallagher), Mary’s pregnant step-sister Claire Clairmont (Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel) and Dr. John Polidori (Debo Balogun) giving birth to the origins of the monster as they spin tales of horror. Catlin imagines an on-going conversation—an ever darker and disturbing series of intersections that, in turn, explore the tragic elements of Shelley’s personal life—resulting in dramatic parallels virtually indistinguishable from the masterwork.