Liz Lochhead's play about the circle of Romantic writers who inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, performed by the Oxford Theatre Guild.
Oxford Theatre Guild are bringing Blood and Ice to The Old Fire Station from 20 to 25 October, directed by Colin Macnee. It's a play by Liz Lochhead, Scotland's equivalent of a former Poet Laureate, and it takes the story of Frankenstein back to where it started.
The play reimagines the novel's creation during the stormy summer of 1816 on the shores of Lake Geneva. Mary Shelley was there with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and her stepsister Claire Clairmont, and it was Byron who challenged the group to each write a ghost story. Lochhead brings her lyricism and wit to the turbulent lives of that circle, and the story follows Mary—daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin—who fell in love at sixteen with the married Percy Shelley. We see her conceive the novel in Geneva and later in England in 1824, haunted by her losses and by the outcast creature she created.
The cast draws from the extraordinary lives of those Romantic writers, artists, lovers, and social reformers: the expelled Oxford radical Percy Bysshe Shelley, the impetuous Claire, the mercurial Lord Byron, the Swiss maid Elise, and the Creature himself. Daily Info called it 'dazzling... one of the best things I've seen in a long time'.
Every week we pick 🏆 the 5 best 🏆 things to do in Oxford and send them to your inbox. Just one weekly email, no spam.
By submitting your email, you accept our Privacy Policy
It runs from 20 to 25 October at 7.30pm, with a matinee on Saturday 24 October at 2.30pm. Tickets are ÂŁ16 standard, with a pay-more option of ÂŁ19 and a pay-less one of ÂŁ13. You'll find it at The Old Fire Station, 40 George Street, Oxford OX1 2AQ.
