“Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” opens this Friday!

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

written by David Catlin

A Classic Story with a Twist!

For tickets click here

Gen Ad – $20 / Seniors 65 and older – $18 / High School Students – $10

Tickets purchased at the door $25 no discounts

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A Classic Horror Story. A Darkly Fascinating True Story.

One Unforgettable Night.

Step into the world of Frankenstein, David Catlin’s acclaimed, electrifying adaptation of Mary Shelley’s legendary tale. Blending spine-tingling horror with the true story of the novel’s creation, this thrilling play-within-a-play brings one of literature’s most iconic monsters to life in a bold, theatrical experience.

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Some very interesting information about Mary Shelley and the world around her. While not necessary to know you will see these references in the play.

The story behind Frankenstein is almost as dramatic as the novel itself—a world of forbidden love, unconventional relationships, personal tragedy, artistic ambition, and a few details that seem stranger than fiction.

Mary Shelley’s life was intertwined with death and loss from the very beginning. Her mother, the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, died just eleven days after giving birth to her. As a child, Mary reportedly spent hours at her mother’s gravesite, reading and tracing the letters on her gravestone. It became a place of refuge and a way to feel connected to a mother she had never known.

In 1814, when Mary was just sixteen, she began meeting regularly at that same churchyard with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a twenty-one-year-old married poet. It was there that the two declared their love for one another. Their relationship scandalized society, and they ran away together that summer, accompanied by Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont.

Although their love story began in 1814, Mary and Percy did not marry until December 30, 1816, after Percy’s estranged wife, Harriet, died by suicide. Their marriage took place just months after the famous gathering at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, where the challenge to write a ghost story helped inspire Mary’s creation of Frankenstein.

Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister, was much more than a supporting character in this extraordinary circle of writers and poets. She accompanied Mary and Percy on their travels across Europe and later became romantically involved with Lord Byron, with whom she had a daughter, Allegra. Claire and Byron never married.

The relationship between the two sisters was complicated. Claire’s persistent presence in Mary and Percy’s household often caused tension, and Mary sometimes expressed frustration with her stepsister’s closeness to Percy and her involvement in their lives. Claire, meanwhile, occupied an uneasy position within a circle of celebrated literary figures, navigating her own ambitions, insecurities, and complicated attachments.

After the deaths of both Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, the women’s shared history became even more difficult to navigate. Their differing recollections and efforts to shape the stories left behind contributed to lasting bitterness. Behind the romantic mythology of this literary circle were real people, struggling with jealousy, grief, ambition, and the desire to control how history would remember them.

Perhaps one of the most haunting stories concerns Percy Bysshe Shelley’s death in 1822. He drowned off the coast of Italy, and his body was cremated on a beach according to the customs of the time. According to a famous account, his heart—or a piece of tissue believed to be his heart—did not burn with the rest of his remains. The story has become part of the Shelley legend, although the precise circumstances and the nature of the surviving relic remain subjects of historical debate. What is known is that Mary preserved a relic believed to be Percy’s heart, reportedly wrapping it in silk and keeping it inside a copy of his poem Adonais, his elegy for the poet John Keats. She kept it among her private possessions until her death in 1851.