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Frankie Stein

Lochgelly Centre

Three stars 

 

When twenty-year-old Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818, little did she realise the enduring scale of the monster she had just spawned. More than two hundred years on from what is regarded as the first science fiction novel, writer Julia Taudevin has drawn inspiration from Shelley’s story and dragged it firmly into the twenty-first century. 

 

Taudevin’s title character is a machine age product of TechBro, the near future’s all consuming conglomerate on a mission to mass produce an army of robots programmed for your every need. Frankie, alas, has been set up to be more human than the real thing. This causes her to be rejected by the Bro-powers that be and left in a limbo with a group of fellow prototypes who similarly don’t compute. 

 

This causes the emotionally charged humanoid to embark on a quest to meet her maker, who comes, not in the form of company man and possibly mad scientist Frank, but the more independently minded Elspeth. Once Frankie discovers her secret origins, she must choose whether to stand alone or else be rewired into anonymity. 

 

Robots with feelings are a familiar SF trope, as are rebellions against a system based on conformity and subservience, where daring to be different provokes hostility and fear. As dystopian fiction becomes AI reality, this is the twilight zone that Taudevin explores in Caitlin Skinner’s big, bright and bold production for the feminist Stellar Quines company. 

 

Over eighty minutes, the show bursts with ideas as it mashes up hi-tech futureshock in a post Taylor Swift world with a set of showtunes by Bethany Tennick. All this is driven by Yana Harris, who plays Frankie’s eternal inbetweener with enthusiastic relish. There is game support too from Shona White as Elspeth and Antony Strachan as Frank.

 

This central trio is supported by a ten-strong community company and sixteen performers from Stellar Quines’ Young Quines Company, who sport a set of wild costume designs by Jennie Lööfas they parade around Karen Tennent’s space age set. As the first show out the traps from the now Fife based Stellar Quines, the future very much starts here. 


The Herald, April 21st 2025

 

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