Dr. STEIN
Edinburgh Festival Fringe Premiere, Leitheatre (Photos: Derek Blackwood)
M6 F6 + extras; Period: 1820s; Setting: Dr Stein’s studio / laboratory in Edinburgh 110mins
Mistress Ramsay, widow; Mirren, her daughter; Jamie, her son; Allie and Jock, servants; Sir Oliver, a lodger; Dr Victor Stein, the new tenant; Elspeth, his fiancée; Harri(et), “boy” assistant; Frankie Stein, the Doctor’s creation; Burke and Hare (can be combined); Townspeople.
In Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, we last see the Doctor and his creation receding across the Arctic ice into oblivion and history. However, it is a little known fact that the doctor was saved by a passing ship and made his way to Edinburgh, drawn there by the reputation for medical excellence backed by a ready supply of spare parts, courtesy Messrs Burke and Hare.
Unfortunately Mrs Shelley forgot to write this sequel so, 190 years on, we have duly obliged.
Now, ensconced in Mistress Meg’s boarding house on the south side of the city, the Doctor is ready to try again …
All set in a time-frame as genuinely historical as Brigadoon, with an assemblage of stock characters (Jacobites, marriageable daughters, thwarted sweethearts, loveable old servants), overwhelmingly preposterous coincidences, a faint resemblance to a classic text, and an unexpected denouement, all in a wobbly pseudo-dialect. A homage to the classic Amateur Drama plays of the last century.
“delicious comedy … bristling with couthy one-liners … a big load of fun … packed with brilliantly appalling puns” Edinburgh Evening News
“ Grand entertainment” One4Review
For details of how we made Dr. S’s lab equipment, click here
Note: although this play is set in Edinburgh (with dialogue to match) it could be re-located to any other suitable city with an old university / medical school of the period – eg Aberdeen, Oxford / Cambridge, Dublin, Yale, Harvard, Canada etc – with suitable amendments to the dialogue
Click here to get a downloadable PDF extract from the full script. For full reading copies or details of performing rights, contact me for details. Please note that permission must always be obtained beforehand for all performances.