Chicago’s Theatre Wit will debut a new stage adaptation of Gods and Monsters, based on Christopher Bram’s 1995 novel Father of Frankenstein as well as its 1998 screen version that starred Sir Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave and Brendan Fraser, according to Playbill.
The work will play a limited run beginning in May. Specific run dates will be announced later.
The project is a collaboration between writer-actor Paul Oakley Stovall and director Tom Mullen, with Stovall directing while Mullen writes the script in a reversal. The mostly fictionalized story centers on the final days of real-life (and openly gay) film director James Whale, noted for his work on the classic horror films Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein as well as the first full screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Show Boat. Gods and Monsters focuses on Whale as his health is failing while simultaneously falling for a young landscaper, Clayton Boone.
In Mullen’s version, the fictional Boone will become a Black man—a choice inspired by Mullen’s research into Show Boat and its casting of Black activist Paul Robeson as Joe.