Mary Shelley
From: Tuesday, 12th June 2012
To: Saturday, 7 July 2012
Our Review: 
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Synopsis
Inspired by the remarkable life of one of literature's greatest writers. Losing her mother at the age of 11, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin finds comfort in reading the family memoir written by her philosophical father William Godwin. However his honest account of her mother's suicide attempt , extra-marital affair and the birth of their illegitimate elder daughter are regarded by society as shocking. Sharing her father's controversially liberal outlook, Mary is herself drawn into scandal when she falls in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a married writer, and elopes - becoming Mary Shelley. Delving into the writer's turbulent personal history, this striking production sheds light on the personal background of a bold young woman who came to write a novel so radical in its ideology, she changed the literary landscape forever.
Our Review:
Michael Coveney - 15 June 2012
Mary Shelley, the daughter of the intellectual feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the radical philosopher William Godwin, was the lover of Shelley and author of Frankenstein. Her story is so remarkable it must be hard to know where to begin with a theatre treatment.
Playwright Helen Edmundson and Shared Experience (in a co-production with the West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Nottingham Playhouse) close in on three sisters – Mary, Fanny and Jane – at the moment the already married Shelley comes into their lives in 1814.
This is two years before the fateful mini-break on Lake Geneva with Lord Byron, so vividly dramatised by Howard Brenton in Bloody Poetry, though that episode features here, too, as a reported interlude, before Mary returns, pregnant, to London and reconciliation with her father on her marriage day at the end of 1816.
The play – even though it’s something of a cut-and-paste 'Life ...
Cast
Kristin Atherton (Mary Shelley)
Flora Nicholson (Fanny Wollstonecraft)
Ben Lamb (Percy Shelley)
William Chubb (William Godwin)
Shannon Tarbet (Jane Clairmont)
Sadie Shimmin (Mrs Godwin)
Creative
Helen Edmundson (Author)
West Yorkshire Playhouse (Producer)
Shared Experience (Producer)
Nottingham Playhouse (Producer)
Polly Teale (Director)
Naomi Dawson (Design)
Keith Clouston (Music)
Liz Ranken (movement) (Director)
Chris Davey (Lighting)
Amy Ball (casting) (Director)
Drew Baumohl (Sound)
Majella Hurley (voice) (Director)
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