Interview: Living Spit on ‘Frankenstein’

If you’ve not yet caught a show by locals Living Spit, you must. If you have, you’ll be reading on avidly. The company – performers Howard Coggins and Stu McLoughlin and director Craig Edwards – made a superb start with their hilarious The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which saw Howard exploiting his uncanny likeness to the portly monarch and Stuart having a lot of fun as Henry’s various female companions. Since then, they’ve brought their brilliant comic and musical talents to bear on a string of hilarious multi-character comedies drawing on literature and history, ranging from A Christmas Carol to Adolf and Winston.

The trio’s latest exploit is a new comedy adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Including an original score performed by a live four-piece band, we’re promised a unique and raucous take on the Gothic chiller. After a run at Salisbury Playhouse, Frankenstein pitches up this month at the Tropicana, Weston-super-Mare’s seafront lido recently re-invigorated by Banksy’s Dismaland. Said The Times: “this ribald reworking of [Shelley’s] gothic horror classic is a beguiling rib-tickler…the sense of mischief and sheer silliness are difficult to resist … with cheerfully overblown rock music from an energetic four-piece band administering regular jolts of reanimating electricity.”

Here are Stu and Howard to tell us more.

The Six Wives… came about through a certain physical resemblance. What was the spark this time?
We explored Frankenstein a couple of years ago for possible performance in a crypt in Bedminster. Then, when Howard was at Salisbury Playhouse for the 2014/15 panto season, the theatre’s artistic director Gareth Machin approached him about making a show for the main house. Frankenstein came back to life and the co-production was born! So we hired a four piece band and wrote a load of funny songs. Boom: we’re Theatre Producers.

How does your Frankenstein balance out the laughter with the thrills and chills?
As massive fans of gothic-horror, we were all interested in putting our own spin on those elements in Frankenstein. We certainly pay lip service to all the Gothic horror audiences will expect, whilst having lots of fun with it too. As well as being a spine-chilling tale, Mary Shelley’s story is also utterly ridiculous, so we’re actually quite loyal to it. Apart from the hamster. And the naked dance sequence…

What sort of a test of Stu’s prodigious acting skills does the Monster himself provide?
Well, Stu has to deal with quite a lot in this show. His character gets put through the mill, so Stu does ALL the faces in his repertoire. We mean ALL of them. No facial muscle is left unstretched. And on top of that you might, um… see more of him than you were ready for.
That might be the scariest thing in the show, actually.

The Tropicana sounds a suitably atmospheric venue. How did you land upon it?
We performed our Christmas Carol there for a few nights last year, and fell in love with its dilapidated and downright spooky feel. We thought if we could ‘bring it to life’ it would lend itself well to our Frankenstein. So we asked if they’d let us do it there. They said yes – and suddenly people started hiring seats and stocking the bar, because apparently that’s the power we have now. 

Watching the trailer, there’s a certain quality to Living Spit humour. How would you define that?
There’s a Barry Cryer quote we like to chuck around: “Analysing comedy is a bit like dissecting a frog. Nobody cares and the frog dies.” We try not to define it, or think about it too much. If a joke or idea makes the three of us laugh, it’s probably a goer.

Frankenstein Nov 12-20, Tropicana, Weston. For tickets, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/living-spits-frankenstein