Last Updated on October 28, 2025
Madeline Smith Unleashes the Monster
I’m quite a fan of Gothic horror movies. As a young teenager, I experienced the gloriously Technicolour-saturated world of the Hammer movies late on Saturday night TV when no one was keeping an eye on me. A star of several of those films, ‘Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell’ (with Peter Cushing) and ‘Taste the Blood of Dracula’ (with Christopher Lee), was the iconic British actress Madeline Smith. Smith’s career also encompassed being Roger Moore’s first ‘Bond Girl’ in Live and Let Die, comedy with The Two Ronnies, a whole host of early British TV satire and being leading lady for Alec Guinness in the original West End production of Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus and for Frankie Howerd in The Fly And The Fox.
For FRANKENSTEIN UNCHAINED! Madeline Smith has collaborated with Jason Frederick, a Canadian composer of music for films and television (Disney’s 101 Dalmatians 2: Patch’s London Adventure, Top Gear USA). The show is ‘an interactive trip thru the world of Mary Shelley’s classic story, featuring a new original soundtrack, performed live to picture’ and with Smith narrating.
If you don’t know the Phoenix Arts Club, it’s a bohemian basement with cabaret-style seating and shows that sits underneath the Phoenix Theatre on the Charing Cross Road. The club was decked out in full Halloween garb, with scary masks, hanging cobwebs, and a glitter ball, all adding to the atmosphere.
FRANKENSTEIN UNCHAINED! opens with Jason, bespectacled in a tweed jacket and black roll-neck, giving a potted history of the Frankenstein movie franchise, going back to the very first movie made by Edison Studios in 1910. He covered the James Whale directed version with Boris Karloff in the 1930s. He also talked in fascinating detail about the various composers associated with the Frankenstein films, in particular James Bernard, who scored many movies for Hammer, giving lots of background information about their compositional techniques. There was a segment on the evolving design of the monster, from Karloff’s oblong head to a bear-like creature, and even Robert de Niro looking a little out of sorts. The use of film clips brought to life an introduction that could have been a little dry and set the audience up effectively for the thrills and spills to come.
The actor Edmund Dehn, a special guest for the evening, delivered a touching ‘Poem for Frankenstein Day’, a plea for us to consider Frankenstein’s humanity.
But then it was on to the main event: Madeline Smith reading from Mary Shelley’s novel to Jason Frederick’s filmic score, with a backdrop of black-and-white film clips interspersed with silent-movie subtitles. For those of us aware of Madeline Smith as the beautiful sidekick to a succession of comedic and dramatic geniuses, this was a revelation.
She turned Shelley’s prose into an intense poetry, caressing it, spitting it out, screaming and shouting as necessary to bring to life this most Gothic of tales. She delivered an acting masterclass that gripped the whole audience, who, at the end, were wondering why this actress isn’t at the National Theatre or the Royal Shakespeare Company delivering the great classical roles, on the BBC in the big costume dramas or American TV fantasy productions. She became the monster, her petite frame morphing into the physicality of this most misunderstood of beasts and switched between roles with ease in a display of technical virtuosity.
Frederick’s music was epic in its sweep, with him at the keyboard playing along to his recorded score, but also bowing an electric guitar, making low rumbles and high squeals. There were live glockenspiel motifs and theremin melodies to make us feel genuinely spooked out.
FRANKENSTEIN UNCHAINED! is touring around the country, and if you get the chance to see the show, you should. It was exciting to hear virtually the totality of Shelley’s book brought to life with plot points often left out in the movies, and to see acting of this quality is a rare treat.
FRANKENSTEIN UNCHAINED!
Phoenix Arts Club
1 Phoenix Street
London
WC2H 8BU
Looking for something more festive? Check our roundup of the Best Christmas Shows in London for 2025
Leave a Reply