Mention “Frankenstein” and what comes to many peoples’ minds is a Boris Karloff figure lurching through the countryside. Both Mary Shelly’s book and the late Liam Scarlet’s ballet, however, flesh out the Creature at the center of the tale as a very complex character who is trying to fit into a society that shuns him.
After eight years in moth balls, Scarlett’s evening-length choreographic vision returns to the War Memorial Opera House, thanks to San Francisco Ballet’s new artistic director, Tamara Rojo. Frankenstein’s return run, through March 26 and April 26 to May 4, will be a fitting revival for this long-buried dance work, as even Dr. Victor Frankenstein himself cannot bring Scarlett, who died in 2022 under tragic circumstances, back to life again.
Frankenstein is a co-production with the Royal Ballet that premiered May 4, 2016 at Covent Garden and at SF Ballet on February 17, 2017, with repeat performances in the 2018 season. Unlike many co-productions, where the entire work is developed by one of the partnering companies and then mounted on the other, this Gothic tale was truly a collaboration.
Scarlett and the principal dancers traveled back and forth between the City by the Bay and London so that everyone from the corps de ballet to the leads could be a part of the entire creative process. The ballet got an enthusiastic response from the audience, despite lukewarm reception from critics, who cited an excess of subplots and focus on the inner workings of Frankenstein family.
On the eve of Frankenstein’s return, I spoke with principal dancer Wei Wang, who will be taking on his third round of portraying the Creature, the first in time in 2017, then as a guest with the Royal Ballet. Asked what it was like to prepare for the role originally, Wang recalls, “It’s hard to remember because I was so concentrated. It’s such a big role and I had so many responsibilities. I knew about the novel but I hadn’t read through it yet. I was reading the version in Mandarin because I was not that familiar with English then.
“For most of the time, I was just absorbing information, trying to process everything from Liam. I can only speak from my personal experience, but I felt a sense of security because he was a dancer himself, and had retired not too long ago. He knew what it feels like and still remembers [being in] his body. He’s carrying the responsibility of making a safe space for the dancers to develop and then experience for themselves. He’s very generous about giving guidance. I feel like I didn’t need to be scared about making a mistake,” Wang said.
“Now I’m also discovering something new about myself and about the Creature than when I first entered the character. I’m feeling that way because these two amazing artists [married couple Joseph Walsh and Lauren Strongin who are remounting the current run of Frankenstein] have their own interpretation. The story is so intricate. All the characters are intertwined with each other, whether they meet or didn’t meet—that’s something Liam has implanted in us. What that person is doing, even when you’re offstage, you have to watch because that has a direct impact on what you’re about to do.”
At this point Wang confided that it’s “kind of an empty feeling going into it, to be honest, without having him [Scarlett] there. He had so much to offer, to give you so much passion about what the ballet world is. We know that we carry a great responsibility of not just reviving this ballet, but also carrying the essence of what he wants to say in this—and also what he has genuinely given to those characters.
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“I think we come into a common ground in the studio. There’s so much room to grow and so many details still to be discovered, through what he’s created in the same space that we worked in before. [Principal dancer] Frances [Chung] and I were just talking about this in the hall. She said, ‘I think he would be happy to see and hear, if he were here—all these wonderful things, all those sparks that we have.’
“This man had so much to offer through his vocabulary of dance, seeing the influence of MacMillan, Ashton, and the other British choreographers on his ballet vocabulary. I haven’t seen those values so many times, but actually having a taste of that was quite amazing. But he has his own feelings about it, and he has own way of telling the story through those steps.”
In 2019, SF Ballet was about to revive another of Scarlett’s ballets, Hummingbird, when allegations emerged that the choreographer was involved in inappropriate behavior with students at the Royal Ballet. SF Ballet dropped the work, and Scarlett’s other works set to be performed in Australia and Europe were also canceled in the wake of the allegations.
An investigation found no evidence to corroborate the allegations and no criminal charges were brought against him. The damage was done, however, and Scarlett committed suicide in 2021, aged 35.
According to a BBC report from the time, “Deborah Scarlett, Liam’s mother, said they spoke about the claims after they appeared in the press. ‘He told me they weren’t true and he couldn’t understand why people would make allegations against him. He was deeply upset. We feel Liam would not have taken his life if his name hadn’t been dragged through the press with inaccurate allegations.’”
“It’s not a great story, obviously,” said stage director Walsh. “When we did Frankenstein the first time, I remember Liam being very happy with both Lauren’s and my approach to it. Working with him closely over the past 10 years and getting to work on many of his ballets, I grew this deep appreciation.
“A couple days after he passed away, we got a call from his mother, and we were told that he left us complete artistic control over his works, along with two others from England—Laura Morera from Royal Ballet and Kristen McGill, who he grew up with in Royal Ballet School and worked closely with—and his old manager, Bennet Gartside, who still handles things, with his mother as the executor of the trust.
“What a shock and what a strange gift to be given. I had conversations prior to and after the death of Liam with [former SF Ballet Artistic Director] Helgí [Tomasson], who said he really hoped that the next artistic director brings Liam’s work back, and it was within the range of what they’re planning for the seasons ahead of time. I think that it was a collective decision between Helgi and Tamara that it was the right time to have Frankenstein come back.
When asked who made the decision to drop all of Scarlett’s work after the allegations, Walsh said, “I really don’t know. I would say that that was more societal pressure happening around the world. He was an artist from the very beginning, you know, and getting to know his mother more over the past few years has been something I am so happy about. Getting to know him, even beyond ballet, talking about him being dressed up as a champagne bottle doing a tap dance as a 12-year-old, seeing the picture of that in the house he grew up in, things like that.
“Lauren and I are just trying to focus on bringing back his work in the most respectful way for the dancers, the artists involved, the designers, and to try and build community around something that could be so heavy. It’s a heavy ballet. We’re just trying to build some warmth and heart into it, because that’s exactly what he was injecting into the story when he was building it.
“The libretto and everything that he designed around it was creating this space for it to be about family dynamics and othering and being left out, and how that affects one’s soul,” Walsh told me. “There are so many threads to the story, and watching dancers who have not experienced Liam’s work get wrapped up in the storytelling… during the casting, you would have 90 people in the room and a hush would fall over everything. There was a space of safety and reverence, the epitome of collaboration.”
I interviewed Scarlett in 2017 just before the premiere of Frankenstein, and again in 2019 during the lead up to his Die Toteninsel (The Isle of the Dead). At that time he said he wanted to show that death isn’t always a negative event, that it has many aspects, including the acceptance of change. “Frankenstein had been niggling away at me for a while,” he said. “And when that one thought kept coming back no matter what other stories I went through, and that one kept knocking, I felt I should just go with it.
“There is a moral implication [to the story]” he continued, “that humans discovering ideas, pushing boundaries were crossing borders that maybe shouldn’t be crossed. That was the real fear in it, as opposed to the revulsion to the physicality of the creature Frankenstein made.”
FRANKENSTEIN at San Francisco Ballet runs through March 26 and April 26 to May 4 at the War Memorial Opera House, SF. More info here.
